2020-2021
Year in Review
I come to you after the most unusual academic year I can remember, one where the challenge was literally global. The Covid-19 pandemic changed everything about how the College of Computing does business: how we teach, research, hire, and serve. I am proud to report that the College not only survived, but also thrived.
Charles Isbell Dean and John P. Imlay Jr., chair
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hrough it all, your philanthropic investments have helped to push the College onward and upward. Our unrestricted endowments, in particular, have afforded me the financial
flexibility to take on unforeseen challenges and growing demands for resources, in order to meet and exceed the College’s goals. We were already in an unusually strong position to face the challenges of the pandemic. Our previous investments in online teaching, most notably the OMSCS program, gave us a deep well of experience to draw on in moving our entire curriculum online. In fact, our director of OMSCS, David Joyner, created an invaluable series of workshops and resources for online teaching to support other faculty in the college and across the Institute.
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Even as we managed Covid-related challenges, the college continued to grow. In fall 2020, we launched our fourth school, the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP). Georgia Tech has been a leader in cybersecurity for 20 years, and already has three cybersecurity degree programs. In fact, we were ranked as #1 in undergraduate cybersecurity education by U.S. News & World Report even before the new school was launched. SCP builds on those strengths by bringing together a wide variety of faculty from four colleges—as well as number of new faculty we are hiring even now—to create innovative research and educational initiatives, and to provide technological and policy support to a wide range of public and private entities. SCP is also the first school at Tech to cross colleges in this way, and is pioneering a new model for academic units at the Institute.
Georgia Tech has been a leader in cybersecurity for 20 years, and already has three cybersecurity degree programs. The College of Computing also launched the new Ethics, Technology and Human Interaction Center (ETHICx) in partnership with the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. As computing spreads into every area of society, from healthcare to media to criminal justice, we in the field must take more responsibility for the ethical implications of our work. The new center will help us to identify and address not only current ethical questions but those that will arise as new technology is developed.
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We have continued our efforts to diversify the field of computing at every level through our Constellations Center for Equity in Computing. We continue to support computer science AP classes in the Atlanta Public Schools. In the first three years of our program, we have helped teach AP Computer Science to 595 students, more than 50 percent of whom have gone on to take the AP Computer Science exam. Our role in computer science education is growing because of State Bill 108, legislation that mandates every high school in the state to offer a computer science course by the 2024-5 school year. We are partnering with the state and with nonprofits to run District Implementation Workshops around the new requirement, which means engaging roughly 80 percent of the state’s school districts. It is hard to overstate the impact our computer science education programs will have on the state’s 930,000 middle- and high-school students.
We continue to support computer science AP classes in the Atlanta Public Schools. Of course, our mission also includes cutting-edge research and scholarship, as does our reputation. This reputation rests on the excellence of our faculty research, with $29.1 million in research expenditures and $30.2 million in new research awards in fiscal 2020. Our researchers work on innovative, data-driven solutions to realworld challenges, sharing new ideas and insights with collaborators in academia, industry and government.
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Our researchers worked on some of the most pressing problems in the nation this year. We had teams modeling Covid for the CDC; finding lead pipes for the city of Toledo, Ohio; monitoring election lines in Fulton County; building systems to evaluate infrastructure after natural disasters. Our grant-funded projects also included:
n $27
million from a U.S. Army research laboratory for developing new methods of creating autonomous, intelligent, and resilient teams of robots.
n $7.5
n $2
n $4.5
n $1.2
million from the Department of Defense to develop a customized attack-resistant software stack in which unneeded code is removed. million from NSF to bring better network coverage to Native American reservations. million from DARPA to build a new programming system for software-defined hardware. million to create a computational assessment kit for PTSD in veterans.
We are able to do all of this and so much more of what we do because of our donors’ generous support and investments. More than that, we are able to achieve performance levels far beyond what might be expected for a unit of our size, precisely because of the funds entrusted to us by our donors.
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We continue to be the largest undergraduate major, graduating more students than units that have far more faculty than we do. We produce more graduate students than the College of Engineering, in spite of being far smaller. We plan to continue expanding our reach, given the urgent need for computationalists in our society and economy. And our investment in online learning has been vital to making it happen. Finally, I’d like to share a very special project. More than 100 donors have come together to endow the Zvi Galil PEACE Chair, in honor of my predecessor as dean. The future holder of the chair will be tasked with ensuring that our computing programs are accessible, equitable and diverse. The chair is a fitting tribute to Zvi, who has done so much to make computing education available to groups who would not otherwise have been able to access it. Many thanks to all of the donors who participated.
We plan to continue expanding our reach, given the urgent need for computationalists in our society and economy. The next few years will pose unique challenges for the College of Computing, some we can see coming and some that will surprise us, as they will across higher education and our society as a whole. I know that this group of remarkable teachers, researchers, staff, and students can meet and surmount those challenges, especially with the generous support our friends and donors provide. Thank you for your continued support.
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The College of Computing Community
Schools and Affiliated Centers/Institutes Our structural units work in harmony to create GT Computing that is far more than the sum of its parts. School of Computer Science School of Interactive Computing School of Computational Science & Engineering School of Cybersecurity and Privacy Center for High-Performance Computing Center for Machine Learning Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies (CRNCH) Center for Deliberate Innovation Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS) GVU Center Center for 21st Century Universities Constellations Center for Equity in Computing Division of Computing Instruction Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines (IRIM) Institute for People & Technology
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