RUTGERS NEWS Office of Media Relations and Communications Contact: Joseph Blumberg 732/932-7084, extension 652 E-mail: blumberg@ur.rutgers.edu http://ur.rutgers.edu/medrel April 25, 2001 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO THE POINT: Rutgers launches new division at computer science open house NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. - Rutgers officials are using the occasion of the fifth annual Computer Science Open House, April 26, to announce formation of a new Division of Computer and Information Sciences. The new division is intended to encourage collaboration of computer scientists with other scientists and engineers. The division will include the existing computer science department and several new interdisciplinary research centers. "Today, information technology pervades everything from biology and medicine to the arts and the humanities," said Joseph J. Seneca, university vice president for academic affairs. "The creation of this division reflects the need to integrate these disciplines in a setting that will provide a venue for new directions in research, a resource for educating our students and a platform for outreach to business and industry." "The Division of Computer and Information Sciences will foster collaboration and out-of-the-box thinking," said Richard S. Falk, acting executive dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School-New Brunswick. "We will achieve this by creating centers within the division that will bring together researchers from different departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, from different academic units at Rutgers, as well as from outside the university. We expect these centers to become identifiable units of intellectual excellence that will further enhance Rutgers' reputation as one of the leaders in information sciences and technology." Dimitris Metaxas, a leading researcher in computer modeling and simulation with applications to computer vision, graphics and medical image analysis, gave the keynote address at the open house. Metaxas will join Rutgers in July to lead the first center in the division, the Center for Vision, Medicine and Graphics. This center will explore applications of graphics, visualization and simulation to medicine, engineering and science. "Other centers are being contemplated in areas ranging from computational aspects of life sciences and human-computer interfaces to art and technology," said Tomasz Imielinski, chair of the department of computer science and director of the Division of Computer and Information Sciences. "We plan to attract major research stars to lead such centers and, in a few years, build a new organization with the computer science department and several strong and well-recognized centers to expand the boundaries of computer and information sciences." Rutgers' computer science department, recently ranked 11th among U.S. state universities by the National Research Council and in the top 25 overall, comprises 39 full-time members and typically graduates 250 computer science majors and bestows about 35 master's degrees and 10 to 15 doctorates a year. Researchers are involved in more than 40 projects funded in part by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the National Science Foundation and industry. These bring Rutgers approximately $4 million annually in external funding. - Joseph Blumberg, Manager of Science Communications Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 101 Somerset Street New Brunswick, N.J. 08901-1281 732-932-7084 ext. 652 fax: 732-932-8412 home: 732-356-3601