School of Computing and Information Sciences

Summary of the 2009-10 Annual Report

Department Overview

The School ranks as the 4th largest undergraduate computer science nationally, and second within the state. The School is one of only four state universities in Florida offering BS degrees in both computer science and information technology. The 2009-10 was an exciting and productive year for the School. In particular, the School maintained a very high level of external funding that was achieved last year, experienced an explosion in the enrollments in the BS in IT program, maintained Ph.D. enrollments in the face of severe budget cuts, and most importantly, both faculty and students received accolades from external sources for their scholarship and leadership. After more than four years of diligent work, the School received the Board of Trustees approval to start a new MS degree program in Information Technology in Spring 2011. This year, the School awarded 173 degrees at all levels, an 18% increase over the previous year, and the third historical high. Enrollment increased to a record high of 1,058, reversing the declines of the last three years. The School has also increased its doctoral students commensurate with its research expenditure. Research awards for the second year in a row exceeded $4M, thanks to substantial funding from the National Science Foundation for a number of center activities, including an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center, a CREST center, and a PIRE program.

Faculty and Research Highlights

The faculty continued its high level of research and scholarly activities. The number of peer-reviewed research publications is now 5 per tenured or tenure-track faculty member, and 7 per research active faculty member. Dr. Vagelis Hristidis received the NSF CAREER award for 2010-2015 for $526,000 for his project “A Collaborative Adaptive Data Sharing Platform.” Dr. Vagelis Hristidis (with A. Balmin and Y. Papakonstantinou) had a Patent published: “Searching Digital Information and Databases,” US Patent No. 7,698,267. Dr. Shu-Ching Chen was named Fellow of the Society of Information Reuse and Integration (SIRI). Dr. Hristidis also received the prestigious Google Research Award to create theory and technologies that facilitate the effortless exchange of information within an application domain.

Student Activities and Achievements

Doctoral student Jorge Guerra received the most prestigious and highly competitive IBM Ph.D. Fellowship, one of only 40 awarded worldwide. Doctoral student Fausto Fleites was awarded the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s Technology Leaders Award in the “Top Technology Student” category.

Ultimate Software committed donating $11,000 per year to support the SCIS Programming Team.

Our Ph.D. students continued to land impressive jobs. Tariq King joined North Dakota State University as an Assistant Professor; Selim Kalayci will join East Tennesee State University as an Assistant Professor; and Fernando Farfan joined the University of Michigan’s database group – one of the strongest in the country – as a post-doctoral researcher.

Fall Term Enrollment

Five Year Fall Term Enrollment SCIS

Degrees Awarded

Degrees Awarded SCIS