Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign


The Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has consistently been ranked as a top computer science program in the world. As of 2018, U.S. News & World Report rank UIUC's Computer Science as a Top 5 CS Graduate School program in the nation, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is ranked as one of the Top 6 Undergraduate Schools in Computer Engineering. CSrankings.org puts UIUC in the top 3 computer science schools in the world by publications and research output in top conferences over the past 10 years. Since its reorganization in 1964, the Department of Computer Science has produced a myriad of publications and research that have advanced the field of Computer Science. In addition, many faculty and alumni have been leads with modern-day applications and projects such as Mosaic, LLVM, PayPal, Yelp, and YouTube.

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 and ILLIAC I 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 ILLIAC I inspired machines such as the MISTIC, MUSASINO-1, SILLIAC, and CYCLONE, as well as providing the impetus for the university to continue its research in computing through the ILLIAC II 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 project, the first computer music, computational numerical methods through the work of Donald B. Gillies, 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 established the UIUC's National Center for Supercomputing Applications 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 and in 1993 it released the Mosaic 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.

Statistics

As of the 2017-2018 academic year, there are a total of 2702 students in the department..
The average salary reported by 2017-2018 graduates was $99,741.
Incoming 2018 freshman class average ACT score: 33.5; average math ACT score: 34.0.
There are 85 full-time faculty members, in the fields of:

Undergraduate

The department offers 14 undergraduate degree programs, all leading to Bachelor of Science degrees, through six different colleges:
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 in Computer Science and Bachelors of Science/Masters of Computer Science.

Graduate