April 15, 2005
4-5:00, LH 102

The Problem with Computing

Jim Foley

Abstract:
All is not well in the computing research community. Funding for basic research is down; undergraduate enrollments are down. Both threaten the long-term technological leadership of the US - a leadership that has meant much to our economic well-being. In this talk I discuss some of the causes of these problems - such as 9/11, concern about outsourcing, the dot.com crash, perhaps a bit of Luddism, misperceptions of computing, belief by some that other technologies may be more important or that all the computing problems have been solved - and then go on to discuss how the computing community, working through the Computing Research Association and other professional societies is addressing these problems.

I will close my talk by discussing why the research and graduate education agendas being developed at The Indiana University School of Informatics are a vital part of solving "The Problem with Computing."

Biography:

Jim Foley is a professor in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, and holds the Fleming Chair in Telecommunications. He was recently CEO of Yamacraw, Georgia's economic development initiative in the design of broadband systems, devices, and chips. Prior to that he was CEO and Chairman of Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Center America, where he was responsible for Mitsubishi's corporate R&D in North America. Earlier, he was Director of MERL - Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory. From 1991 to 1996 he was Professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech, where he was founding director of the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center in the College of Computing. The Center was ranked number one in 1996 by US News and World Report for graduate computer science work in graphics and user interaction. He previously served on the faculties of the University of North Carolina and then the George Washington University - becoming Chairman of the Department of EE&CS before moving to Georgia Tech. Foley is co-author of three computer graphics texts and a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE. He received SIGGRAPH's bi-annual Steven Coons award for contributions to computer graphics, and is one of seven inaugural members of the SIGCHI Academy for contributions to Computer-Human Interaction.

Dr. Foley is chairman of the Computing Research Association - an organization of over 200 computer science and computer engineering university departments, professional societies and research labs. He has consulted extensively for corporations and government agencies, and serves on several advisory boards.