CS Research and Graduate schools

1. CS Research and Graduate schools Sam Kamin, CS Department

2. Attending graduate school in CS One of your options after graduating with your BS in CS is to go on to graduate school. You can get either a Master of Science degree (MS), or a Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD), or both.

3. The MS degree Continue in school from 1-2 years after BS Take 10 advanced courses Write thesis (usually). Not “original” research Extended survey or project Spend six months to a year on it Work with research advisor, usually CS professor

4. The PhD degree Continue in school from 4-6 years after BS (usually includes MS) Take 10-15 advanced courses Write thesis (usually). Original, publishable research Spend several years on it Work with research advisor, usually CS professor

5. Additional UIUC programs • Many schools have alternative, non-traditional graduate programs of various kinds. • UIUC has • MCS (“Master of CS”) program – non-thesis master’s program. Originally intended for students entering without CS undergrad degree – now used mostly for on-line program • 5-year BS/MS program

6. UIUC 5-year BS/MS • Special program in this department. Extremely competitive entrance – much more competitive than ordinary admission to graduate program • Only for MS (with thesis) • Reduces time to get MS by allowing some upper-level courses to overlap between BS and MS. BS and MS awarded at same time. • http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/undergraduate/programs.php#bsms • Deadline for applications: Oct. 24

7. Where should I go? About 200 schools in US offer PhD Several schools in Illinois offer PhD – UIUC, UIC, UC, Northwestern, IIT Those schools, plus several more – e.g. Loyola, SIU – offer MS

8. Where should I go, really? Grad school rankings appear in several places, most notably US News and World Report. Current top 10: 1. MIT 1.Stanford 1.Carnegie-Mellon 1.UC Berkeley 5. UIUC 6. Cornell 7.U. Washington • Princeton • U Texas-Austin 10. U Wisconsin-Madison

9. How do I pay for it? Tuition roughly the same as for undergrads Most grad students “supported” Teaching assistantship Research assistantship Other assistantship, e.g. computer admin Support usually includes tuition + $1000-1500/month stipend

10. Why get an MS? Learn broader range of advanced CS topics than you would learn on the job Do same kind of work as if you had a BS, but start at a higher level, with higher pay and more responsibility; or teach at non-research-oriented college Get a chance to be a student for another year or two!

11. Why get a PhD? Study an interesting subject in more depth than you can on the job Study subjects that can only be pursued in graduate school, e.g. theoretical CS Live the carefree and spiritually and materially rewarding life of a professor – PhD required

12. What jobs can I get with a PhD? In industrial R&D: Work on advanced projects in high-tech companies. In academia: Professor in research-oriented college. Divide time between teaching and research. Write papers, attend conferences, see the world. In industrial research: Small number of companies have pure research departments, e.g. Bell Labs

13. Where do I sign up? Most grad schools require applications in late Fall for Fall entry, early Fall for Spring entry. Check web pages. Application consists primarily of grades, GRE scores, and letters of reference. Good web page on grad school:http://www.cs.umbc.edu/www/graduate/info.html

14. Getting letters of reference • Letters from faculty who know you is extremely important for admission to top grad schools. • Difficult to get them in large school like this: • Take small classes – CS 498, 500-level courses if possible • Join research group – http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/undergraduate/ugresearch.php • Get job at NCSA, etc.

15. What kind of research would I do? Research in CS usually divided into several areas: Software: systems, programming languages, software engineering, networking, graphics, data bases, etc. Theory: analysis of algorithms, computational geometry, etc.

16. Numerical analysis: solutions to scientific problems, simulation of complex physical systems, etc. Artificial intelligence: natural language recognition, learning, planning, etc. Computer architecture: building parallel processors, faster memory systems, faster networks, etc.

17. What is research? Start with (difficult) problem Simplify it: consider a subset of the problem; make simplifying assumptions Propose a solution Verify the solution, either mathematically or experimentally Correct and generalize

18. Example Problem: How can computer be programmed to search world-wide web? Simplify: Ignore natural language syntax – just match words; ignore all punctuation marks; consider only .com domains Propose a solution: Search web pages, following all links; count and store all words in a list.

19. Example (continued) Verify the solution: Implement the proposed solution. Gather group of test subjects and see if they can effectively search web. Correct and generalize: Step 4 shows that punctuation marks are too important to be ignored; go back to step 3. When solution works well, consider how to incorporate language meaning

20. Research Areas CS research areas differ in problems they ask, solutions they look for, methods of verification they employ. E.g. some areas are applied; they look at practical problems, propose realistic solutions, verify experimentally; others are theoretical; they look at longer-term problems, propose plausible solutions; verify mathematically.

21. Software How can software be distributed dynamically in a “free market,” while giving clients assurances of safety? Biggest field in CS – includes practical and theoretical sub-fields Typical research problems: How can complex video images be presented in real-time?

22. Theoretical CS What is the fastest way to multiply two matrices? Most mathematical area in CS How can you calculate the intersection between two geometric solids, given their surfaces?

23. Numerical Analysis Simulate the airflow over an airplane wing in enough detail that a wind tunnel is not needed. Highly mathematical, but usually applied to specific scientific problems.

24. Artificial Intelligence Study of how to make computers act intelligently Turing test: If an impartial observer in a “chat room” can’t tell the person from the computer, then the computer is “intelligent”. Train a computer to look at a picture of a person and tell their mood.

25. Computer Architecture What is the precise effect of changing the size of a computer’s internal cache? Interface between EE and CS Given that some problems are inherently sequential, how can a thousand computers be used to speed up computation by a factor of a thousand?

26. Human-computer Interaction (HCI) How can applications be designed so that they’re easier to learn? Interface between psychology and CS Can computers support group work, so that it enhances rather than impedes cooperation?

27. Research at UIUC • http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/undergraduate/ugresearch.php • http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/research/areas.php • http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/directory/directory.php?type=faculty • www.ece.uiuc.edu/research/