DONALD BREN SCHOOL OF INFORMATION AND COMPUTER SCIENCES

Hal S. Stern, Dean

6210 Donald Bren Hall
Academic Counseling: (949) 824-5156
http://www.ics.uci.edu/

Faculty
Undergraduate Program in ICS
Graduate Program in ICS
Courses in ICS

Department of Computer Science
Department of Informatics
Department of Statistics

Overview

The Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (Bren ICS) embodies excellence, creativity, and collaborative innovation in computer science and information technology. As the only independent computing school in the University of California system, it is well-positioned to continue its tradition of exploring and advancing the boundaries of a broad, multidisciplinary field on on a global scale.

A $20-million endowment from The Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren drives the School's vigorous recruitment and retention of distinguished faculty scholars. The faculty have extensive training in traditional computer science, as well as engineering, mathematics and statistics, and the social sciences. The School's stand-alone structure, as opposed to being part of an engineering school, enables the faculty to take the broadest possible view of computer science and information technology. This breadth is reflected in the diverse set of academic degree options for undergraduate and graduate students, some which are interdisciplinary and jointly administered with other academic units.

The School's three departments, Computer Science, Informatics, and Statistics, fuel a wide range of instructional and research efforts including design of algorithms and data structures; computer architecture and embedded computer systems; networked and distributed systems; systems software; social and mobile computing; artificial intelligence, machine learning and data mining; computer games and virtual worlds; databases and information retrieval; computer graphics and visualization; bioinformatics, computational biology and genomics; computer-supported cooperative work, human-centered computing and human-computer interaction; security and privacy; software engineering; managerial and social aspects of computing technology; and statistics. The vibrant Bren School community continues to explore innovative topics ranging from building complete computer systems on chips smaller than a human fingernail to developing user interface systems that allow workers on opposite sides of the world to collaborate effectively. Bren School research continues to focus on how computing and information technology can be used to solve a broad set of real-world problems such as improving how first responders communicate during a crisis, optimizing transportation systems, analyzing data to expedite biological research, and improving network security.

Faculty are active participants and leaders of numerous research institutes spanning computer science, including the Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics; Institute for Software Research; Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds; Center for Embedded Computer Systems; California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2); Center for Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems; Center for Organizational Research; Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations; Genetic Epidemiology Research Institute; Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing; Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction; Secure Computing and Network Center; Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences; Center for Ethnography; Institute for Transportation Studies; and Ada Byron Research Center.

Faculty and student-driven research in the Bren School is supported through a variety of grants, gifts, and contracts from public and private institutions such as the State of California, the U.S. Department of Education, various U.S. defense agencies, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and various companies, including Adobe, The Aerospace Corporation, Apple, Boeing, Disney, Experian, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung, and Yahoo! Since 2001, ICS has received nearly $100 million in extramural funding, in addition to the recent $20-million endowment.

Faculty and alumni of the Bren School of ICS have contributed some of computing's most significant advancements, including revolutionizing computer-aided drafting techniques; the creation of the current Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1); development of the Internet standards for HTTP and Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI); the founding of the Apache HTTP Server Project that produces the software for over 60 percent of public Internet Web sites; and the creation of the Domain Name System (DNS) that translates Web and e-mail addresses into the numeric system used to route information along the Internet.

The Bren School is committed to increasing diversity in the computing and information technology fields. The Ada Byron Research Center was created in 2003 to address research and outreach topics aimed at increasing the participation of women and other underrepresented populations in computer science, engineering, digital media, and related information technology areas. The School is an active partner of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, whose overarching goal is parity in the professional information technology workforce.

DEGREES

¹Offered jointly with The Paul Merage School of Business. See the Interdisciplinary Studies section of the Catalogue for information.
²Offered jointly with The Henry Samueli School of Engineering. See the Interdisciplinary Studies section of the Catalogue for information.