College of Natural Sciences University of Northern Iowa

Welcome to the Computer Science Department

Dr. Ben Schafer

College of Natural Sciences University of Northern Iowa

When was the first computer invented?

• Sort of a trick question

• The first computers were people – who did computations

College of Natural Sciences University of Northern Iowa

• The first DIGITAL computer was built at Iowa State University in 1941.

• The Attanasoff-Berry Computer

What do you think about when you of computer science??

Information SecurityUser informationAssurance

Digital Special Effects

Databases

High Performance Simulation

Human ComputerInterface Design

Groups of Contacts

Icons Representing

Individual contacts

Group Icons

Wearable Computing

VirtualEnvironments

Graphics

Computer Vision

Robotics

Ubiquitous Computing

Bioinformatics

What do these things have in common?

• They all treat the computer as only part of a bigger picture.

• They all treat the computer as a tool!

Which tool would you rather use?

Hopefully you said “It depends”

• Just like all tools, there are times where the computer is the “right” tool, and there are times when the computer is the “wrong” tool

Three Levels of tools

• Standard Tools – “Off the shelf” tools such as Microsoft Office, Web

Browser, iTunes, etc. – Most users can “figure them out”

• Expert Tools– Professional grade tools such as ArcGIS,

MathCAD, Cadsoft, (Microsoft Office) etc.– Most users have been trained to use these tools

• Tool Builders– The people who build these other tools

Does computer science == programming

• Saying the computer science is only about programming would be like saying that cooking is only about recipes!

• There is so much more!

What is Computer Science?

• Computer scientists study: – how to write recipes (programming, software

engineering) – how the structure of the recipes effect the results

(algorithms) – the nature of the inputs and outputs (data structures,

databases) – what can recipes actually produce (theory, systems,

artificial intelligence) – how well the recipes work (theory, human-computer

interfaces)

How can we use the computer to help people make difficult decisions? (Such as what movie should I see?)

Understanding the Computation

Ghost Apollo 13

Toy Story

Titanic United 93

R.V. X-Men 3

Ben D A B D ? ? ? Amy A F D F Mark A A A A A A Paul D A C Jason A C A C A Philip F A F Gene D A A

Prediction-MovieLens

What the members of this department study

• Software Engineering

• Programming Languages

• Bioinformatics

• Information Storage and Retrieval

• Real Time Systems

• Cluster Computing

• Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

What is Bioinformatics?

Developing software tools for mining biological databases.

Utilizing software tools to perform biological studies.

Interdisciplinary field

BIOINFORMATICS

Physics

Chemistry

Mathematics

Biology

Statistics

Computer Science

Real-Time Embedded Systems

Cluster Computing

Robots!

• Let’s look at some demos!

What should you look for in a college?

• Schools that have a strong program in your field of interest.

• Schools that have a computer science department that can teach you something even if you aren’t a CS major.