When Union students think of computer science, many things come to mind. We tend to muse about phenomenal innovations, which have spurred revolutions in social networking, increasing processing speeds and robotics.
Right now, intriguing advances and developments are occurring in Union’s Computer Science Department.
I sat down with Professors Valerie Barr and Department Chair, Chris Fernandes to better explore current developments in Computer Science taking place right here at Union.
According to Fernandes, there is a “brand new” facility dubbed “the CROCHET Lab—an acronym for the Collaborative Robotics and Human Empirical Testing Lab” which is “opening up in the ground floor of the Wold building.”
This new laboratory will focus primarily in the field of “robots and interface design,” said Fernandes.
The facility will hopefully open sometime in October. But the new space is not just for those whose expertise lies in Computer Science.
There is “collaboration going on there between many different people in this department and other departments as well,” continued Fernandes.
Among the other disciplines interested are those in the realms of “psychology [and] modern languages, who are all interested in working with our faculty” explained Fernandes.
However, faculty specializing in “political science, economics, electrical and computer engineering [and] mechanical engineering” have also expressed interest in using the new lab, elaborated Barr.
But the CROCHET lab is not the only recent cooperative development in the CS department.
“A lot of our initiatives… started by professor Barr involve realizing that every discipline can be enhanced by computational initiatives of some sort,” remarked Fernandes.
A big priority for the department is to spread the influence of “Computer Science to other disciplines” which may “benefit from analyzing [a] mound of data, whatever that mound happens to be, with computational techniques.”
The CS department has been maintaining such efforts for quite awhile though.
Barr, who is the Director of Interdisciplinary Programs, asserts that “over the last five years” the CS department has “worked with two dozen faculty in 15 different departments on infusing computational components into their courses.”
“All of its been interesting, I think, in terms of magnitude of data,” remarked Barr.
In one particular instance, the Computer Science department worked on a project with Professor Jeffrey Corbin of the Biology Department “involving 474,000 records of data looking at native versus non-native plant species in national parks.”
On another occasion, the CS department collaborated with Professor Andrew Burkett of the English Department to “[develop] the Blake Browser which gives people the ability to look through [Blake’s] poems and all [of] his images because he would do multiple versions over time and then do text analysis.”
But along with collaboration with other disciplines has come an ever-increasing interest in Computer Science.
Fernandes claims that “computer science design of large programs and working with clients… are still all jobs that are in very high demand… and I think that word is starting to get out to parents. For many schools around us there has been quite a surge in the majors in Computer Science and we expect one here too.”
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