Rice Hall, New Home of Computer Science
The Computer Science department has moved into Rice Hall, a beautiful new building right next to our former home, Olsson Hall.
The admin offices are on the fifth floor, and faculty offices, lab spaces, and collaboration spaces on the second, third, fourth, and fifth floors. The first floor has an auditorium (not yet ready, but should be open by November), bagel shop (hopefully opening soon), and some classroom lab space.
Contrary to what some Computer Science students may think, the building is not named for everyone’s favorite computability theorem, or for our most popular food staple, but is named for Paul and Gina Rice, who made the lead donation for the building. Paul Rice is a SEAS graduate who founded PEC Solutions, which provides information technology services for government. PEC was acquired by Nortel in 2005, and has since become Avaya Government Solutions. Thank you Paul and Gina!
The official dedication of the building will be Friday, 18 November. All current and future students and alumni are invited to join us for the dedication.
New Alumna Profile: Emily Lam (BACS 2008)
Emily Lam graduated with BACS (and Math) majors in 2008, and now is doing Google Application development for an automotive company in Amsterdam (and Brazilian jiu-jitsu!).
Do you have any advice for current computer science students?
Please don’t rush into a job or take the first job that comes to you right after graduation (same goes for Internships). I made the mistake of going into an IT consulting firm as an entry level analyst right after college because I was desperate for a stable job… [Read More]
Proxino Launched
Ethan Fast (BACS 2011) and Muzzammil Zaveri (BACS 2011) have launched a new company, Proxino, that provides developers with a way of finding bugs in their site’s JavaScript code, as well as optimizing the loading and performance of scripts. Ethan and Muzzammil were funded by Y Combinator, starting in Summer 2011 (right after finishing their BACS degrees). Here’s an article about Proxino:
YC-Funded Proxino: Automated Error Reporting For Your Client-Side JavaScript, TechCrunch, 22 August 2011.
Both Ethan and Muzzammil worked on projects somewhat related to this while they were students at UVa. Ethan did a DMP with Westley Weimer on automated program repair. Muzzammil worked in my research group on a project to build a secure web application framework.
Why Software is Eating the World
The Wall Street Journal has an essay by Marc Andreessen (who developed the first commercially successful web browser while an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois) on Why Software is Eating the World (Wall Street Journal, 20 August 2011). Its worth reading the full article, but here are a few excerpts.
Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.
Over two billion people now use the broadband Internet, up from perhaps 50 million a decade ago, when I was at Netscape, the company I co-founded. In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day. …
Health care and education, in my view, are next up for fundamental software-based transformation. My venture capital firm is backing aggressive start-ups in both of these gigantic and critical industries. We believe both of these industries, which historically have been highly resistant to entrepreneurial change, are primed for tipping by great new software-centric entrepreneurs. …
Secondly, many people in the U.S. and around the world lack the education and skills required to participate in the great new companies coming out of the software revolution. This is a tragedy since every company I work with is absolutely starved for talent. Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high. This problem is even worse than it looks because many workers in existing industries will be stranded on the wrong side of software-based disruption and may never be able to work in their fields again. There’s no way through this problem other than education, and we have a long way to go.
New Alumnus Profile: Richard Hsu
Richard Hsu graduated with a BACS in 2009 and now works for a scientific consulting company in northern Virginia.
Looking back, what were the most worthwhile things you did while you were a student?
What really helped me out with the interview process was having a wealth of experience to talk about. Getting involved with undergraduate research and having several years of internships gave me a lot to work with. Having interviewed several students seeking employment, there is nothing more disappointing than talking to a candidate without anything more to talk about than their coursework… [Read More]
