The Siebel School of Computing and Data Science (formerly the Department of Computer Science from 1964 to 2024) is the academic department for

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

Grainger College of Engineering The Grainger College of Engineering is the engineering college of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It was established in 1868 and is considered as one of the original units of school. Campus The College of Engineering is located ...

of the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

History

In 1949, the University of Illinois created the Digital Computer Laboratory following the joint funding between the university and the U.S. Army to create the

ORDVAC The ORDVAC (''Ordnance Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)'', is an early computer built by the University of Illinois for the Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground. It was a successor to the ENIAC (along with EDVAC built ear ...

and

ILLIAC I The ILLIAC I (Illinois Automatic Computer), a pioneering computer in the ILLIAC series of computers built in 1952 by the University of Illinois, was the first computer built and owned entirely by a United States educational institution. Compute ...

computers under the direction of physicist Ralph Meagher. The ORDVAC and ILLIAC computers the two earliest von-Neumann architecture machines to be constructed. Once completed in 1952, the

inspired machines such as the

MISTIC The MISTIC, or ''Michigan State Integral Computer'', was the first computer system at Michigan State University and was built by its students, faculty and staff in 1957. Powered by vacuum tubes, its design was based on ILLIAC, the supercomputer b ...

MUSASINO-1 The MUSASINO-1 was one of the earliest electronic digital computers built in Japan. Construction started at the Electrical Communication Laboratories of NTT at Musashino, Tokyo in 1952 and was completed in July 1957. The computer was used until Jul ...

SILLIAC The SILLIAC (''Sydney version of the ILLIAC I, Illinois Automatic Computer'', i.e. the ''Sydney ILLIAC''), an early computer built by the University of Sydney, Australia, was based on the ILLIAC and ORDVAC computers developed at the University o ...

, and

CYCLONE In meteorology, a cyclone () is a large air mass that rotates around a strong center of low atmospheric pressure, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere as viewed from above (opposite to an ant ...

, as well as providing the impetus for the university to continue its research in computing through the

ILLIAC II The ILLIAC II was a revolutionary super-computer built by the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, University of Illinois that became operational in 1962. Description The concept, proposed in 1958, pioneered Emitter-coupled logic (ECL) ...

project. Yet despite such advances in high-performance computing, faculty at the Digital Computer Laboratory continued to conduct research in other fields of computing as well, such as in Human-Computer Interaction through the

PLATO Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

project, the first computer music (the

ILLIAC Suite ''Illiac Suite'' (later retitled String Quartet No. 4)Andrew Stiller, "Hiller, Lejaren (Arthur)", ''Grove Music Online'' (reviewed December 3, 2010; accessed December 14, 2014). is a 1957 composition for string quartet which is generally agre ...

), computational numerical methods through the work of

Donald B. Gillies Donald Bruce Gillies (October 15, 1928 – July 17, 1975) was a Canadian computer scientist and mathematician who worked in the fields of computer design, game theory, and minicomputer programming environments. Early life and education ...

, and James E. Robertson, the 'R' co-inventor of the SRT division algorithm, to name a few. Given this explosion in research in computing, in 1964, the University of Illinois reorganized the Digital Computer Laboratory into the Department of Computer Science, and by 1967, the department awarded its first PhD and master's degrees in Computer Science. In 1982, UIUC physicist Larry Smarr wrote a blistering critique of America's supercomputing resources, and as a result the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

established the

National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a unit of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and provides high-performance computing resources to researchers in the United States. NCSA is currently led by Professor Bill ...

in 1985. NCSA was one of the first places in industry or academia to develop software for the 3 major operating systems at the time – Macintosh, PC, and UNIX. NCSA in 1986 released

NCSA Telnet NCSA Telnet is an implementation of the Telnet protocol developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, first released in 1986 and continuously developed until 1995. The initial ...

and in 1993 it released the

Mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

web browser. In 2004, the Department of Computer Science moved out of the Digital Computer Laboratory building into the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science following a gift from alumnus

Thomas Siebel Thomas M. Siebel (; born November 20, 1952) is an American businessman, technologist, and author. He founded the enterprise software company Siebel Systems and is the founder, chairman, and CEO of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence software plat ...

. The Department of Computer Science was renamed the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science in 2024, following a $50 million gift from Thomas M. Siebel.

Degrees and programs

Undergraduate

The department offers 14 undergraduate degree programs, all leading to Bachelor of Science degrees, through six different colleges: * Computer Science (

Engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

) * Computer Science and Physics (

) * Mathematics and Computer Science ( Liberal Arts and Science) * Statistics and Computer Science ( LAS) * Computer Science and Chemistry ( LAS) * Computer Science and Linguistics ( LAS) * Computer Science and Anthropology ( LAS) * Computer Science and Astronomy ( LAS) * Computer Science and Economics ( LAS) * Computer Science and Geography and Geographic Information Systems ( LAS) * Computer Science and Advertising (

Media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...

) * Computer Science and Philosophy ( LAS) * Computer Science and Animal Sciences ( Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences)
Computer Science and Crop Sciences
( Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences)
Computer Science and Music
( Fine and Applied Arts) The department also sponsors a minor in computer science available to all UIUC students. The department also offers two 5-year bachelors/masters programs through the College of Engineering: Bachelor of Science/Master of Science (B.S./M.S.) in Computer Science and Bachelors of Science/Masters of Computer Science(B.S./M.C.S.).

Graduate

* Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) * Master of Science (M.S.) in Computer Science * Professional Masters of Computer Science (M.C.S.) *
Online MCS
is offered in partnership wit
Coursera
*
MCS in Data Science
MCS-DS) Track is offered in partnership with th
School of Information Science
th
Department of Statistics
an
Coursera
* Master of Science in Bioinformatics (M.S. Bioinformatics)

In popular culture

In the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', the antagonist and sentient computer

HAL 9000 HAL 9000 (or simply HAL or Hal) is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in the '' Space Odyssey'' series. First appearing in the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', HAL ( Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic C ...

says it was made operational at the HAL Plant in Urbana, Illinois which was meant to represent the

Coordinated Science Laboratory The Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) is a major scientific research laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. With deep roots in information technology, CSL has invented and deployed many landmark innovations, such as the el ...

where the

ILLIAC ILLIAC (Illinois Automatic Computer) was a series of supercomputers built at a variety of locations, some at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In all, five computers were built in this series between 1951 and 1974. Some more modern ...

project was conducted.

Notable faculty

Sarita Adve Sarita Vikram Adve is the Richard T. Cheng Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are in computer architecture and systems, parallel computing, and power and reliability-aware sy ...

, principal investigator for the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center *

Vikram Adve Vikram Adve (born 28 June 1966) is the Donald B. Gillies professor in the Department of Computer Science and a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Academia In 2020, Vikram Adve b ...

, helped to create

LLVM LLVM, also called LLVM Core, is a target-independent optimizer and code generator. It can be used to develop a Compiler#Front end, frontend for any programming language and a Compiler#Back end, backend for any instruction set architecture. LLVM i ...

along with

Chris Lattner Christopher Arthur Lattner (born 1978) is an American software engineer and creator of LLVM, the Clang compiler, the Swift (programming language), Swift programming language and the MLIR (software), MLIR compiler infrastructure. After his PhD ...

, Former Interim Head of the Department of Computer Science * Gul Agha, director of the Open Systems Laboratory and researcher in

concurrent computation Concurrent computing is a form of computing in which several computations are executed ''Concurrency (computer science), concurrently''—during overlapping time periods—instead of ''sequentially—''with one completing before the next starts. ...

* Prith Banerjee, former senior Vice President of Research at

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, Californi ...

and director of

HP Labs HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for HP Inc. HP Labs' headquarters is in Palo Alto, California and the group has research and development facilities in Bristol, UK. The development of programmable desktop calculators, ink ...

* Roy H. Campbell, Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Professor of Computer Science *

Timothy M. Chan Timothy Moon-Yew Chan is a Founder ProfessorTwo ...

, Founder Professor of Computer Science *

Herbert Edelsbrunner Herbert Edelsbrunner (born March 14, 1958) is a computer scientist working in the field of computational geometry, the Arts & Science Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at Duke University, Professor at the Institute of Science and Tec ...

, recipient of the

Alan T. Waterman Award The Alan T. Waterman Award, named after Alan Tower Waterman, is the United States's highest honorary award for scientists no older than 40, or no more than 10 years past receipt of their Ph.D. It is awarded on a yearly basis by the National Scienc ...

* David Forsyth, Professor of Computer Science * C. William Gear, mathematician specialized in

numerical analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic computation, symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of ...

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

, and

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

, mathematician and computer scientist specialized in

game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...

and computer architecture * Bill Gropp, Thomas M. Siebel Chair Professor, director of the

, and co-creator of

Message Passing Interface The Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a portable message-passing standard designed to function on parallel computing architectures. The MPI standard defines the syntax and semantics of library routines that are useful to a wide range of use ...

, IEEE Computer Society President-Elect (2021) *

Jiawei Han Jiawei Han (; born August 10, 1949) is a Chinese-American computer scientist and writer. He currently holds the position of Michael Aiken Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. H ...

, Abel Bliss Professor specialized in

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

* Michael Heath, director of the Center for the Simulation of Advanced Rockets and former interim department head (2007–2009) *

Thomas Huang Thomas Shi-Tao Huang (, June 26, 1936 – April 25, 2020) was a Chinese-born Taiwanese-American computer scientist and electrical engineer. He was a researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). ...

, researcher and professor emeritus specialized in Human-Computer Interaction * Ralph Johnson, Research Associate Professor and co-author of '' Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software'' *

David Kuck David J. Kuck, a graduate of the University of Michigan, was a professor in the Computer Science Department the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1965 to 1993. He is the father of Olympic silver medalist Jonathan Kuck. While at the U ...

, sole software designer on the

ILLIAC IV The ILLIAC IV was the first massively parallel computer. The system was originally designed to have 256 64-bit floating-point units (FPUs) and four central processing units (CPUs) able to process 1 billion operations per second. Due to budget cons ...

and developer of the

CEDAR Cedar may refer to: Trees and plants *''Cedrus'', common English name cedar, an Old-World genus of coniferous trees in the plant family Pinaceae * Cedar (plant), a list of trees and plants known as cedar Places United States * Cedar, Arizona ...

project * Steven M. LaValle, principal scientist at

Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets, virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a virtual reality company founded by Palmer Luckey that is widely credited with reviving the virtual reality indust ...

Chung Laung Liu Chung Laung Liu (; 1934 – 7 November 2020), also known as David Liu or C. L. Liu, was a Taiwanese computer scientist. He received his undergraduate degree in Taiwan, master's degree and doctorate in the United States. Early life and education ...

, Professor of Computer Science * Ursula Martin, computer scientist specialized in

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the Abstraction, abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The Associati ...

and

formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematics, mathematically rigorous techniques for the formal specification, specification, development, Program analysis, analysis, and formal verification, verification of software and computer hardware, ...

and a

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

* Bruce McCormick, professor of physics, computer science, and bioengineering *

Klara Nahrstedt Klara Nahrstedt is the Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and directs the Coordinated Science Laboratory there. Her research concerns multimedia, quality of service, and m ...

, Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professor of Computer Science and director of the

David Plaisted David Alan Plaisted is a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research univ ...

, faculty at the Department of Computer Science until professorship at

UNC-Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolling students in 1795 ...

* Daniel Reed, former department head (1996–2001) and former director of the

(2000–2003) *

Edward Reingold Edward M. Reingold (born 1945) is a computer scientist active in the fields of algorithms, data structures, graph drawing, and calendrical calculations. In 1996 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2000 he re ...

, specialized in

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s and

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization and storage format that is usually chosen for Efficiency, efficient Data access, access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships amo ...

s *

Dan Roth Dan Roth () is the Eduardo D. Glandt Distinguished Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the Chief AI Scientist at Oracle. Until June 2024 Roth was a VP and distinguished scientist at AWS AI. In his r ...

, Professor of Computer Science * Rob A. Rutenbar, Abel Bliss Professor and former department head (2010–2017), noted for advances in computer hardware * Marc Snir, Michael Faiman and Saburo Muroga Professor of Computer Science and former department head (2001–2007) * Shang-Hua Teng, Professor of Computer Science and

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

laureate * Josep Torrellas, Willett Faculty Scholar in Computer Science and research faculty for the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center *

Marianne Winslett Marianne Southall Winslett is a professor emerita of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, specializing in databases. She is known for her "possible models" approach to belief revision. Winslett earned her Ph.D. in ...

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram ( ; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical So ...

, former Professor of Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science and founder of

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. ...

Frances Yao Frances Foong Chu Yao () is a Taiwanese-American mathematician and theoretical computer scientist. She is currently a Chair Professor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) of Tsinghua University. She was Chair Profes ...

, Professor of Computer Science and staff at

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Xerox Holdings Corporation (, ) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox was the pioneer of the photocopier market, beginning with the introduc ...

* Yuanyuan Zhou, Professor of Computer Science and founder of Emphora, Pattern Insight, and Whova

Notable alumni

* Sohaib Abbasi B.S. 1978, M.S. 1980, former CEO of

Informatica Informatica Inc. is an American software development company founded in 1993. It is headquartered in Redwood City, California. Its core products include enterprise cloud data management and data integration. It was co-founded by Gaurav Dhillon a ...

Nancy Amato Nancy Marie Amato is an American computer scientist noted for her research on the algorithmic foundations of motion planning, computational biology, computational geometry and parallel computing. Amato is the Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering ...

Ph.D. 1995, Unocal Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, TA&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of ...

, steering member of

CRA-W The Computing Research Association's Committee on Widening Participation in Computing Research (CRA-WP) has the mission of increasing the success and participation of underrepresented groups in computing research and education at all levels. In p ...

, and current head of the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign * Daniel E. Atkins III Ph.D. 1970, Inaugural Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure for the U.S. National Science Foundation. *

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and ...

B.S. 1993,

Mosaic (web browser) NCSA Mosaic is a discontinued web browser. It was instrumental in popularizing the World Wide Web and the general Internet during the 1990s by integrating multimedia such as text and graphics. Although not the first web browser (preceded by Wo ...

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...

Eric Bina Eric J. Bina (born October 1964) is an American software programmer who is the co-creator of Mosaic and the co-founder of Netscape. In 1993, Bina along with Marc Andreessen authored the first version of Mosaic while working as a programmer at Na ...

M.S. 1988,

Ed Boon Edward Boon (born February 22, 1964) is an American video game programmer, voice actor, and director. Boon was employed for over 15 years at Midway Games. Since 2011, he has worked for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for one of its subsi ...

B.S., ''

Mortal Kombat ''Mortal Kombat'' is an American media franchise centered on a series of fighting game, fighting video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992. The original ''Mortal Kombat (1992 video game), Mortal Kombat'' arcade game spawned Lis ...

'' * Rick Cattell B.S. 1974, co-founder of

Object Data Management Group The Object Data Management Group (ODMG) was conceived in the summer of 1991 at a breakfast with object database vendors that was organized by Rick Cattell of Sun Microsystems. In 1998, the ODMG changed its name from the Object Database Management Gr ...

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

, winner of the 1978

ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is awarded annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to the authors of the best doctoral dissertations in computer science and computer engineering. The award is accompanied by a prize of US$20,000 a ...

Steve Chen Steve Chen (; born August 25, 1978) is a Taiwanese-American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur who is one of the co-founders and previous chief technology officer of the video-sharing website YouTube. After he co-founded the company A ...

B.S. 2002,

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

* Steve S. Chen Ph.D. 1975,

Cray Computer Cray Inc., a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is an American supercomputer manufacturer headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It also manufactures systems for data storage and analytics. Several Cray supercomputer systems are listed i ...

* Edward Davidson Ph.D. 1968, professor emeritus in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

Ann Arbor Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

Steve Dorner Steve Dorner is an American software engineer who developed the Eudora e-mail client in 1988 as a part of his work as a staff member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dorner was hired by Qualcomm in July 1992 and Eudora was subseq ...

B.S. 1983,

Eudora (email client) Eudora () is a family of email clients that was used on the classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also supported several palmtop computing platforms, including Newton and the Palm OS. The final Macintosh and Win ...

Brendan Eich Brendan Eich ( ; born July 4, 1961) is an American computer programmer and technology executive. He created the JavaScript programming language and co-founded the Mozilla project, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla Corporation. He serve ...

M.S. 1986,

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

Clarence Ellis Clarence Ellis (born February 11, 1950) is an American former professional football player who was a safety for the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League (NFL). He was the Falcons' first pick in the 1972 NFL draft The 1972 NFL d ...

Ph.D. 1969, First African-American Computer Science Doctorate recipient and pioneer in

Computer Supported Cooperative Work Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...

and Groupware *

Ping Fu Ping Fu (born 1958) is a Chinese-American entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of 3D software development company Geomagic, and was its chief executive officer until February 2013 when the company was acquired by 3D Systems Inc. , she is the Vi ...

M.S. 1990,

Geomagic Geomagic is the professional engineering software brand of Hexagon AB. The products are focused on computer-aided design, with an emphasis on 3D scanning and other non-traditional design methodologies, such as voxel-based modeling with haptic in ...

Mary Jane Irwin Mary Jane Irwin is an Emerita Evan Pugh Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She has been on the faculty at Penn State since 1977. She is an international expert in computer architec ...

M.S. 1971, PhD. 1975, NAE member; computer architecture researcher *

Jawed Karim Jawed Karim (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur. He is one of the co-founders of YouTube and the first person to upload a video to the site. The site's inaugural video, "Me at the zoo", uploaded o ...

B.S. 2004,

* Robert L. Mercer M.S. 1970, Ph.D. 1972, co-CEO of

Renaissance Technologies Renaissance Technologies LLC (also known as RenTec or RenTech) is an American hedge fund based in East Setauket, New York, on Long Island, that specializes in systematic trading using quantitative models derived from mathematical and statist ...

and pioneer in

Computational Linguistics Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

* Marcin Kleczynski B.S. 2012, CEO and founder of Malwarebytes * Pete Koomen M.S. 2006, co-founder and CTO of

Optimizely Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Optimizely provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities, as well as web content ...

Ph.D. 2005,

* Der-Tsai Lee M.S. 1976, Ph.D. 1978, 14th President of

National Chung Hsing University National Chung Hsing University (NCHU; ; lit. National Resurgence University) is a comprehensive research university in South District, Taichung, Taiwan. Currently, NCHU is among the four universities of the Taiwan Comprehensive University Sys ...

Max Levchin Maksymilian Rafailovych "Max" Levchin (born July 11, 1975) is a Ukrainian-American software engineer and businessman. In 1998, he co-founded the company that eventually became PayPal. Levchin made contributions to PayPal's anti-fraud efforts ...

B.S. 1997,

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

, Slide * Nimit Maru B.S. 2004, co-founder and CEO of

Fullstack Academy Fullstack Academy is an immersive software engineering coding bootcamp located in New York City. Students of the full-time flagship course learn full stack JavaScript over the course of a 13-week, on-campus program. Fullstack Academy offers be ...

Robert McCool Robert Martin McCool (born 1973), more commonly known as Rob McCool, is a software developer and architect. McCool was the author of the original NCSA HTTPd web server, later known as the Apache HTTP Server, and until Apache version 2.2, files a ...

, B.S. 1995, author of the original

NCSA HTTPd NCSA HTTPd is a discontinued web server originally developed at the NCSA at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign by Robert McCool and others. First released in 1993, it was among the earliest web servers developed, following Tim Bern ...

web server and the

Common Gateway Interface file:Common Gateway Interface logo.svg, The official CGI logo from the spec announcement In computing, Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is an interface specification that enables web servers to execute an external program to process HTTP or HTTPS ...

(CGI) * Mary T. McDowell B.S. 1986, former CEO of

Polycom Poly Inc., formerly Polycom, is an American multinational corporation that develops video, voice and content collaboration and communication technology. Poly is a subsidiary of HP Inc. Polycom was co-founded in 1990 by Brian L Hinman and Jeff ...

, former executive vice president at

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

* Peng T. Ong M.S. 1988, co-founder of

Match.com Match.com is an online dating service with headquarters are in Dallas, Texas. The company has offices in Dallas, West Hollywood, San Francisco, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing. Match.com is owned by Match Group, which owns several online d ...

Ray Ozzie Raymond "Ray" Ozzie (born November 20, 1955) is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010. Before Microsoft, he was best known for ...

B.S. 1979,

Lotus Notes HCL Notes (formerly Lotus Notes then IBM Notes) is a proprietary collaborative software platform for Unix ( AIX), IBM i, Windows, Linux, and macOS, sold by HCLTech. The client application is called Notes while the server component is branded ...

Groove Networks Groove Networks was a software company based in Beverly, Massachusetts. Founded by Ray Ozzie, the creator of IBM's Lotus Notes application, the privately held company specialized in productivity software that allows multiple users to work collabor ...

, and former CTO and Chief Software Architect at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. * Anna Patterson Ph.D. 1998, Vice President of Engineering, Artificial Intelligence at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

and co-founder of Cuil * Linda Petzold B.S. 1974, Ph.D. 1978, Professor of Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering at

UC Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers college, UCSB joined ...

, NAE member, and J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software recipient; computational science and engineering researcher * Fontaine Richardson Ph.D. 1968, founder of

Applicon Applicon, Incorporated was one of the first manufacturers of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing ( CAD/CAM) systems. It was co-founded in 1969 in Bedford, Massachusetts by four founders working at the MIT Lincoln Lab: Fontaine Richardson wh ...

M.S. 1985, founder, chairman, and CEO of

Siebel Systems Siebel Systems, Inc. () was an American software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications—notably Siebel CRM. The company was founded by Thomas Sieb ...

; founder, chairman, and CEO of C3.ai *

Russel Simmons Russel Simmons is an American businessman. He co-founded Yelp, Inc. with Jeremy Stoppelman and served as CTO from July 2004 until he left in June 2010. Prior to co-founding Yelp, Simmons was a co-founder of PayPal, where he was a Lead Software ...

B.S. 1998, co-founder and initial CTO of Yelp, Inc and a member of the

PayPal Mafia The PayPal Mafia is a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have since founded and/or developed additional technology companies based in Silicon Valley, such as LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTu ...

* Anil Singhal M.C.S. 1979, co-founder and CEO of NetScout Systems * James E. Smith M.S. 1974, Ph.D. 1976, winner of the 1999

Eckert–Mauchly Award The Eckert–Mauchly Award recognizes contributions to digital systems and computer architecture. It is known as the computer architecture community’s most prestigious award. First awarded in 1979, it was named for John Presper Eckert and Joh ...

* Jeremy Stoppleman B.S. 1999, co-founder and CEO of Yelp, Inc. *

Parisa Tabriz Parisa Tabriz is an American engineer, computer security expert, and executive working for Google as a Vice President and General Manager of Google Chrome. She is known professionally by her semi-official job title, "Security Princess". Early ...

B.S. 2005, M.S. 2007, computer security expert at

and Forbes 2012 "Top 30 People Under 30 To Watch in the Technology Industry" * Mark Tebbe B.S. 1983, Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at

Booth School of Business The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (branded as Chicago Booth) is the Postgraduate education, graduate business school of the University of Chicago, a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

and co-founder of Answers Corporation *

Andrew Yao Andrew Chi-Chih Yao ( zh , c = 姚期智 , p = Yáo Qīzhì; born December 24, 1946) is a Chinese computer scientist, physicist, and computational theorist. He is currently a professor and the dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Informati ...

Ph.D. 1975,

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

winner, theoretical computer science researcher

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Computer science departments in the United States 1964 establishments in Illinois Computer science institutes