The School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US is a school for computer science established in 1988. It has been consistently ranked among the best computer science programs over the decades. As of 2024 U.S. News & World Report ranks the graduate program as tied for No. 1 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley. [1]
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science have made fundamental contributions to the fields of algorithms, artificial intelligence, computer networks, distributed systems, parallel processing, programming languages, computational biology, robotics, language technologies, human–computer interaction and software engineering.
In July 1965, Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Alan J. Perlis, in conjunction with the faculty from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA, renamed Tepper School of Business in 2004), staff from the newly formed Computation Center, and key administrators created the Computer Science Department, one of the first such departments in the nation. Their mission statement was "to cultivate a course of study leading to the PhD degree in computer science, a program that would exploit the new technology and assist in establishing a discipline of computer science." The educational program, formally accepted in October 1965, drew its first graduate students from several existing academic disciplines: mathematics, electrical engineering, psychology, and the interdisciplinary Systems and Communications Sciences program in the Graduate School of Industrial Administration. The department was housed within the Mellon College of Science.
With support from Newell, Simon, Nico Haberman, Provost Angel Jordan and President Richard Cyert, the computer science department began a two-year status as a "floating" department in the early months of 1986. Then, the Department began to grow, both academically and financially. In 1988, the School of Computer Science was established, among the first such schools in the country. The Computer Science Department was the original department within the school. [2]
During the 1970s the Computer Science Department offered only a PhD study program, with no master's degree as an intermediate step. The PhD program required a minimum of six years of residency. It was called the "do or die" program among the graduate students, because a student could not drop a PhD and receive a master's degree. It had quickly focused on computer networking, operating systems (Hydra, Accent, Mach), and robotics.
The Gates Center for Computer Science and the Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies are home to much of the School of Computer Science. The $98 million complex was opened in 2009. [3] It has 217,000-square-foot (20,200 m2) of floor space, including about 310 offices, 11 conference rooms, 32 labs, 8,000 square feet (740 m2) of project space and the Planetary Robotics Center. It also houses 12 classrooms, including a 250-seat auditorium. [4]
Additionally, the Gates Center connects to the Purnell Center, which houses the School of Drama, via the Randy Pausch Memorial Footbridge. The bridge represents Professor Pausch's own devotion to linking computer science and entertainment, as he was a co-founder of Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. [5]
Mack Scogin Merril Elam Architects of Atlanta, Georgia were the lead architects. [3] The Gates and Hillman Centers have received LEED Gold Certification. [6]
SCS research professor Scott Fahlman is credited with the invention of the smiley face emoticon. He suggested the emoticon on an electronic board in 1982 as a way for board readers to know when an author was joking. The text of Fahlman's original post was lost for nearly 20 years but was later recovered from backup tapes: [10]
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-) From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c> I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes - given current trends. For this, use :-( |
Tartan Racing is a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon and General Motors Corporation that competes in the DARPA Grand Challenge. The Grand Challenge is a competition for driverless cars sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Tartan Racing is led by Carnegie Mellon roboticist William L. "Red" Whittaker. [11]
In 2007, Tartan Racing won the DARPA Urban Challenge, in which 11 autonomous ground vehicles raced over urban roadways. In the challenge, team vehicles were required to obey all California driving laws, share the road with other drivers and robotic cars, and complete the course in under six hours. Tartan Racing won the $2 million cash prize with Boss, a reworked 2007 Chevy Tahoe. Averaging about 14 miles (23 km) an hour for a 55-mile (89 km) trip, Boss beat the second-place team, Stanford Racing, by just under 20 minutes. [12]
The School established a number of honors and awards. [13]
Faculty members from the School of Computer Science have received international recognition for achievements within their fields. These honors include memberships and fellowships in the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the MacArthur Fellowship Program, and the Guggenheim Fellowship Program. [14] Notably, thirteen SCS faculty and alumni have won the A. M. Turing Award, the Association for Computing Machinery's most prestigious award, [15] often called the "Nobel Prize of computing." These include Raj Reddy, Manuel Blum and Edmund M. Clarke of the recent active faculty, in addition to Emeritus Faculty Dana Scott and former faculty Geoffrey Hinton. [16]
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, it became Carnegie Mellon University through its merger with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, founded in 1913 by Andrew Mellon and Richard B. Mellon and formerly a part of the University of Pittsburgh.
Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for over 50 years. He was the founding director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He was instrumental in helping to create Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies in India, to cater to the educational needs of the low-income, gifted, rural youth. He was the founding chairman of International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. He was the first person of Asian origin to receive the Turing Award, in 1994, sometimes known as the Nobel Prize of computer science, for his work in the field of artificial intelligence.
The Robotics Institute (RI) is a division of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. A June 2014 article in Robotics Business Review magazine calls it "the world's best robotics research facility" and a "pacesetter in robotics research and education."
Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley is a degree-granting branch campus of Carnegie Mellon University located in Mountain View, California. It was established in 2002 at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field.
Sebastian Thrun is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist. He is CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a Google VP and Fellow, a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, and before that at Carnegie Mellon University. At Google, he founded Google X and Google's self-driving car team. He is also an adjunct professor at Stanford University and at Georgia Tech.
William L. "Red" Whittaker is an American roboticist and research professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He led Tartan Racing to its first-place victory in the DARPA Grand Challenge (2007) Urban Challenge and brought Carnegie Mellon University the two million dollar prize. Previously, Whittaker also competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge, placing second and third place simultaneously in the Grand Challenge Races.
Randal E. Bryant is an American computer scientist and academic noted for his research on formally verifying digital hardware and software. Bryant has been a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University since 1984. He served as the Dean of the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon from 2004 to 2014. Dr. Bryant retired and became a Founders University Professor Emeritus on June 30, 2020.
The Human–Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) is a department within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is considered one of the leading centers of human–computer interaction research, and was named one of the top ten most innovative schools in information technology by Computer World in 2008. For the past three decades, the institute has been the predominant publishing force at leading HCI venues, most notably ACM CHI, where it regularly contributes more than 10% of the papers. Research at the institute aims to understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities by integrating aspects of computer science, design, social science, and learning science.
Ekaterini Panagiotou Sycara is a Greek computer scientist. She is an Edward Fredkin Research Professor of Robotics in the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University internationally known for her research in artificial intelligence, particularly in the fields of negotiation, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. She directs the Advanced Agent-Robotics Technology Lab at Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. She also serves as academic advisor for PhD students at both Robotics Institute and Tepper School of Business.
Randolph Frederick Pausch was an American educator, a professor of computer science, human–computer interaction, and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Manuela Maria Veloso is the Head of J.P. Morgan AI Research & Herbert A. Simon University Professor Emeritus in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was previously Head of the Machine Learning Department. She served as president of Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) until 2014, and the co-founder and a Past President of the RoboCup Federation. She is a fellow of AAAI, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is an international expert in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Christopher Granger Atkeson is an American roboticist and a professor at the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Atkeson is known for his work in humanoid robots, soft robotics, and machine learning, most notably on locally weighted learning.
Eric Poe Xing is an American computer scientist whose research spans machine learning, computational biology, and statistical methodology. Xing is founding President of the world’s first artificial intelligence university, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI).
Angel G. Jordan was a Spanish-born American electronics and computer engineer known as the founder of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and co-founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and served on its faculty for 55 years, since 2003 as Emeritus. He was instrumental in the formation of the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon. He has made contributions to technology transfer and institutional development. He served as Dean of Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering and later as the provost of Carnegie Mellon University.
Ragunathan "Raj" Rajkumar is the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is also affiliated with the Robotics Institute and the Heinz School of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. He also serves as the Director of the Metro21 Smart Cities Institute and as the Director of the Mobility21 USDOT National University Transportation Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He also leads the General Motors-CMU Connected and Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Laboratory (CAD-CRL), and the Real-Time and Multimedia Systems Lab (RTML) there.
Chris Urmson is a Canadian engineer, academic, and entrepreneur known for his work on self-driving car technology. He cofounded Aurora Innovation, a company developing self-driving technology, in 2017 and serves as its CEO. Urmson was instrumental in pioneering and advancing the development of self-driving vehicles since the early 2000s.
Farnam Jahanian is an Iranian-American computer scientist, entrepreneur, and academic. He serves as the 10th president of Carnegie Mellon University.
Roni Rosenfeld is an Israeli-American computer scientist and computational epidemiologist, currently serving as the head of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an international expert in machine learning, infectious disease forecasting, statistical language modeling and artificial intelligence.
Byron Boots is an American professor of machine learning and robotics. He is the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Washington (UW). Boots is also the co-founder and chief executive officer of Overland AI, a technology startup.