Department Overview

Administratively located within the College of Natural Sciences, the Department of Information and Computer Sciences is itself like a School or College in everything other than name. ICS is a high-demand area offering six degrees:

• BA in Information and Computer Sciences,
• BS in Information and Computer Sciences,
• MS in Information and Computer Sciences,
• MLISc in Library and Information Sciences,
• PhD in Computer Science,
• PhD in Communication and Information Sciences (interdisciplinary).

There are currently 700 majors (540 undergraduates and 160 graduate students), and over 2,000 students were served by the Department in the 1999-2000 academic year. With 4% of the majors on the Manoa campus, the thirteen ICS and five Library Information Science faculty members comprise just 1% of the total faculty at UH Manoa. An academic administrator, two technical staff and two office staff round out the Department.

 

 

Achievements

ICS faculty are strong in key areas.

• Current ICS faculty members have expertise in the educational applications of technology, human-computer interaction, library science, networking, and software engineering, as well as a solid foundation in core computer science.
• In 1998, Professor W. Wesley Peterson received the Japan Prize for Information Technologies, the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in this category of endeavor.

The ICS faculty has furthered entrepreneurial, high technology, and software-intensive industries in Hawai'i:

• Norm Abramson, ICS faculty in the '70s and '80s, built the AlohaNet, which is a precursor to today's Ethernet technology. He left the Department to pursue a start-up in California.
• David Stoutemyer, an affiliate graduate faculty member, started a company called Soft Warehouse to market symbolic algebra software, and left in the early '90's to devote full-time effort to this company. Soft Warehouse was later bought out by Texas Instruments.
• Torben Nielson, ICS faculty member in the late '80s and early '90s, created successful university partnerships with private industry to develop Hawai'i as the initial Internet hub of the Pacific.
• Stephen Itoga, a professor, was influential in the development of the Digital Media Lab, a partnership to provide high tech resources to incubator companies at the Manoa Innovation Center.
• Art Lew, a professor from the 70's until his recent passing in 2008, held a patent on a new processor architecture with Richard Halverson, one of his Ph.D. students.
• David Chin, a professor, started a company to commercialize his artificial intelligence research.
• Jan Stelovsky, an associate professor, started a company to commercialize his multimedia research, and holds a patent.
• David Pager, a professor, holds a patent for a medical device developed with a gynecology professor, and has formed a company to market this product.
• Philip Johnson, a professor, was a co-founder of an internet startup and has served on the Board of Directors for various high tech companies in Hawaii. 

ICS students are also contributing to successful entrepreneurial activities within the State of Hawai'i:

• Richard Halverson, a PHD graduate of ICS, has started a company now housed at the Manoa Innovation Center.
• Robert Brewer, an Ph.D. student, was a founder of LavaNet, a local Internet service provider.
• ICS students have received 3 of the 7 Aspect Technology Grants that have been awarded for entrepreneurial project proposals since the establishment of the grant program by Richard Chan. Two of these students are among the founders of a local Internet startup company.

 

 

Research

ICS has established research groups that pursue work directly related to its mission.

• In software engineering, the Collaborative Software Development Lab has pursued funded research leading to innovative software technologies in use by many academic and industrial sites world-wide.
• The Advanced Network Computing Lab enjoys generous industrial support and provides students with opportunities to work with state-of-the-art networking technologies.
• The Adaptive Multimodal Interaction Laboratory pursues fundamental research in human-computer interaction, educational software, and user interface design. Eye tracking and biosensor research are unique features of this lab.
• The Laboratory for Interactive Learning Technologies has forged  partnerships with the Department of Education and various international collaborators to support innovative uses of high technology in education, as well as conducting fundamental research in the design of software for collaborative learning.
• The 3D Visualization and Imaging System Lab (3DVIS Lab) develops and investigates innovations in Virtual and Augmented Reality, creating unique human-computer intelligent interfaces in collaborative environments, and invents novel imaging systems and computer vision methods.

Please see the Research Lab Page for a complete listing of labs and links to their web sites.

 

Education

ICS offers a solid core of courses and research to prepare students to meet the demands of the "Information Age."

• Through a generous grant from the Sloan Foundation, ICS is spearheading the development of UH's Asynchronous Learning Network by developing a partially online version of its B.A. degree and a completely online version of its M.S. degree, enabling today's information technology workers to improve their skills without leaving their jobs.
• ICS graduates go on to work in companies such as Hughes, Boeing, TRW, Lockheed, IBM, HP, Oracle, Microsoft, and, in Hawai'i, high tech companies like Adtech, Square USA, and Uniden.
• ICS is working with the Hawai'i State Department of Education to provide advanced placement computer science courses through DOE's e-school, and has formed a partnership for Hawai'i Networked Learning Communities, an ambitious initiative using technology to improve science, math, and technology in Hawai'i's rural schools.