Distinguished Professor Divyakant Agrawal
Welcome to the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara!
CS@UCSB is a special place where exciting research meets exceptional teaching against the backdrop of wonderful natural beauty. As faculty, students, and staff of CS@UCSB, we feel lucky to be part of an outstanding department in the most impactful academic discipline of our times while living in one of the most beautiful places in the world!
The 21st century is the century of computing. Computing has had a tremendous impact on human civilization already, but we are still at the beginning of the computing revolution. Although the rapid change brought by computing technologies can be disorienting at times, as computer scientists, we believe that computing has tremendous power to do good. Computing has changed how we work, how we communicate, how we teach and learn, how we entertain, how we shop; the list goes on and on. The power of computing technologies in transforming businesses and the outstanding successes of computing companies are reported frequently, and the entrepreneurial spirit of computing is well represented in our department, which has resulted in many successful commercial ventures led by our students and faculty.
That said, the impact of computing is not limited to producing new technologies and startups. Since its conception, computing has played a key part in almost all significant human achievements. Alan Turing helped to bring an end to the 2nd World War by cracking the Enigma code using computing. NASA achieved the first moon landing with the aid of computing. Computing has influenced every academic discipline from the physical and social sciences to humanities, and it has transformed how modern science is done. Computing has become a fundamental tool for extending human knowledge, an essential part of creation, discovery, and innovation.
Although the history of computing is filled with tremendous achievements, its future is even brighter. Here at CS@UCSB, we are shaping the future of computing by our outstanding research and education programs. Our world-renowned faculty and exceptional students conduct exciting research in all areas of computer science. From harnessing the power of machine learning in a responsible manner to ensuring the security of cloud computing, from investigating the new horizons of human-computer interaction and visual computing to improving the energy efficiency of computing, our faculty and students are making impactful contributions in all frontiers of computer science. Our teaching faculty are innovators in teaching methods that enable us to provide an outstanding education to our students at all levels and broaden participation in computing.
As the students, faculty, and staff of CS@UCSB, we work together, we help each other, we encourage each other, and, most importantly, we believe in each other. This is the key to our success at CS@UCSB!
Please take a look at our website for information about our research and education programs, and if you wish to be part of an energetic, collegial, and supportive computer science department that is at the forefront of the computing revolution, join us! If you have questions or comments you can reach me at coms-chair@ucsb.edu.