1. College of Natural Sciences University of Northern Iowa Welcome to the Computer Science Department Dr. Ben Schafer

2. 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

3. College of Natural Sciences University of Northern Iowa The first DIGITAL computer was built at Iowa State University in 1941. The Attanasoff- Berry Computer

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

5. Information Security User information Assurance Digital Special Effects Databases High Performance Simulation Human Computer Interface Design

6. Wearable Computing Virtual Environments GraphicsComputer Vision Robotics Ubiquitous Computing Bioinformatics

7. 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!

8. Which tool would you rather use?

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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!

12. 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)

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

14. Understanding the Computation

15. Prediction-MovieLens

17. What the members of this department study Software Engineering Programming Languages Bioinformatics Information Storage and Retrieval Real Time Systems Cluster Computing Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

18. What is Bioinformatics? Developing software tools for mining biological databases. Utilizing software tools to perform biological studies.

19. Interdisciplinary field BIOINFORMATICS Physics Chemistry Mathematics Biology Statistics Computer Science

24. Real-Time Embedded Systems

25. Cluster Computing

26. Robots! Lets look at some demos!

27. 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 arent a CS major.