Computer & Information Sciences

60th Anniversary Celebration

1964 – 2024

May 5, 2024

Timeline

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June 6, 1964

Department of Computer Science and Statistics is established at the University of Delaware and becomes the 9th Computer Science Department to be established in the United States.

Photo of David Lamb
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1964
David Ernest Lamb, University of Delaware professor of chemical engineering, director of UD’s Computing Center, becomes founding chair of the department. He served until 1974.
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1969
ARPANET, the first digital global network, is launched.
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1969
C.A.R. Hoare publishes An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming, establishing a formal logical system for reasoning about programs.
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1970
UD becomes one of the first ARPANET nodes and helps develop CSNET, NSFNet, and NREN.
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May, 1970

Hatem M. Khalil is the first to earn a Computer Science Ph.D. at UD. He would later go on to become Acting Chair of Computer Science from 1978 to 1981.

Photo of Hatem Kahlil
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October, 1970
Department of Computer Science and Statistics moves into the newly built Smith Hall.
Smith Hall 1970
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1971
Stephen Cook publishes The complexity of theorem proving procedures, introducing the P=NP? problem.
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1972
The first compiler for the C programming language is released as part of Version 2 Unix.
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1973

The PDP-11/45 Computer System is installed. 

PDP-11-45 Color console
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1974
James F. Leathrum becomes chair of the department and serves until 1978.
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1978
The Department of Computer Science and Statistics becomes the Department of Computer and Information Sciences with J.F. Leathrum as Department Chair. Statistics is moved to the Mathematics Department.
Hatem Kahlil
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1978
Hatem M. Khalil becomes acting chair of the department, serving until 1981.
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1980
UD establishes first global “post office” for academic mail.
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1981
IBM introduces its first personal computer, uses MS-DOS.
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1982
Bobby F. Caviness become department chair, serving until 1987.
Bobby F. Caviness
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1982
The EE/CIS Lab was formed, substantially upgrading the computing facilities available to CIS faculty and graduate students. This was facilitated by a $600,000 UNIDEL Grant secured by department chair Bob Caviness.
Here is a shot of huey.udel.edu (far VAX) and the back of louie.udel.edu (plus its console). Notice how louie.udel.edu’s cabling (Massbus, power, etc.) was routed under the raised floor. This picture was taken looking left from 113’s door into the machine room.
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January 1, 1983
ARPANET adopts the TCP/IP communication protocols.
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1984
Apple Computer introduces the Macintosh computer.
Photo of Claudio Gutierrez
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1987
Claudio Gutiérrez served as acting chair of the department for the 1987–1988 academic year. Prof. Gutiérrez was a Visiting Professor from 1983 until 1995.
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1988

B. David Saunders serves as acting department chair for the 1988–1989 academic year.

Photo of B. David Saunders
Photo of John Case
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1989
John Case becomes department chair, serving until 1994.
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1992

Sandra Carberry, Dan Chester, and Kathy McCoy help organize the 30th International Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics, the leading conference in Natural Language Processing.

logo for the MOSAIC web browser
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1993
World Wide Web browser Mosaic is released.
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1994

Errol L. Lloyd becomes department chair, serving until 1999.

Photo of Errol Lloyd
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1995
Sun Microsystems introduces the Java programming language.
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1995
The second annual East Coast Computer Algebra Day is held at Smith Hall. Professor Bob Caviness becomes Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Symbolic Computation, serving until 1999. The department was very active in computer algebra; other faculty working in this area included Professors David Saunders and George Collins, as well as numerous visitors.
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1996
UD’s programming team ranks 7th in the world in the ACM Intercollegiate Programming Contest. Our team members are undergraduates Terry Haddock, Geoff Pease, and David Stabosz. 1001 teams participated worldwide.
Mark Lasoff with Oscar Award
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1997
Mark Lasoff, CIS Department Alum (1985) wins the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for the movie Titanic.
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October, 1998
The Ninth Annual IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations & Management is held in Clayton Hall. Professor Adarsh Sethi was General Chair.
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1999

Professor M. Sandra Carberry becomes chair of the Computer and Information Sciences Department. Carberry graduated with a Ph.D. from UD CIS in 1985 and was chair from 1999 to 2004.

Sandra Carberry
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2000
Growth Networks, a startup co-founded by Guru Parulkar (PhD, 1987) is sold to Cisco for $355M.
Photo of Henry Glyde
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2004
Physics professor Henry Glyde serves as acting department chair for the 2004–2005 academic year.
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2005

B. David Saunders becomes chair of the department, serving until 2010.

Photo of B. David Saunders
Keith Decker
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2006
Professor Keith Decker receives DARPA’s Information Processing Technology Office Special Recognition Award for “foundational research in generalized coordination technologies.”
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November 21, 2006
The UD Computing Museum opens in Smith Hall. The museum contains hardware and software items from the past, including an 8-inch floppy disk and a 1920s Morse Code transmitter capable of transmitting about 10 bits of information per second. This was a student collaboration supervised by Professor Chandra Reedy of UD Museum Studies, and Professors Paul Amer and Lori Pollock of the CIS department.
Computing museum exterior
students standing with a sculpture made of computer parts
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2010

Department of Computer and Information Sciences joins the College of Engineering.

Photo of Errol Lloyd
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2010
Errol Lloyd returns as department chair, serving until 2015.
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2011
CIS sends 5 female students to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Since that time, participation has grown to over 30 students and faculty supported in large part by donors.
CIS students attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
Jennifer Chu-Carroll and IBM Watson
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February, 2011
IBM Watson is introduced to the world and competes on Jeopardy!. Jennifer Chu Carroll (Ph.D., 1997) was part of the team that created Watson.
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2015

Kathy McCoy becomes chair of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, serving from 2015 to 2021.

Kathleen McCoy
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2016

CIS Department SPARC (Student Project Arena for Research and Collaboration) Lab opens. This lab was created as a new space for Computer Science students aimed at facilitating teamwork.

SPARC Lab
Michael Mignano will discuss his career journey thus far and his role in democratizing the art of podcasting during a Department of Computer and Information Sciences lecture on Oct. 21.
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2016
CIS alumnus Michael Mignano launches Anchor, a software platform for making podcasts.
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2017

Professor James Clause and co-authors receive the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis Impact Paper Award for their 2007 paper Dytan: A Generic Dynamic Taint Analysis Framework.

James Clause
Signing of DE Law-Comp Science Education
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2017
Delaware Governor John Carney signs a law requiring public high schools to teach computer science. Lori Pollock, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Computer Sciences Department and Chrystalla Mouza, Professor in the Department of Education and CIS Department Adjunct Professor, were on hand to witness the signing of the bill.
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2020

Professor Cathy Wu, Unidel Edward G. Jefferson Chair in Engineering and Computer Science, is named a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for her contributions to bioinformatics, computational biology, knowledge mining and semantic data integration. The ACM Fellow is the most prestigious member grade, recognizing the top 1% of ACM members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology.

Cathy Wu
Rudolf Eigenmann
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2021
Rudi Eigenmann appointed to serve as acting chair of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences.
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2021

The International Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing is held on the UD campus, organized by CIS professor Sunita Chandrasekaran and ECE professor Xiaoming Li.

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2022

Dr. Weisong Shi, an internationally renowned expert in edge computing, autonomous driving, and connected health is named Chair of the Department of Computer and Information Sciences.

Weisong Shi
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2022
Professors Lori Pollock and Vijay Shanker and graduate students Giriprasad Sridhara, Emily Hill, and Divya Muppaneni receive the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering Most Influential Paper Award for their 2010 paper Towards automatically generating summary comments for Java methods.
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August, 2023

Seven faculty members and several labs move to the new FinTech Innovation Hub on STAR Campus.

The FinTech Innovation Hub on STAR Campus
Cathy Wu
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2023
Dr. Cathy Wu named as a 2023 Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB).
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2023

Professor Chandra Kambhamettu is selected to be co-General Chair of the 2026 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, the premier annual computer vision conference.

Kambhamettu
Weisong Shi
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2023
Professor and Dept. Chair Weisong Shi is selected to be General Chair of ACM MobiCom 2024, the 30th Annual International Conference On
Mobile Computing And Networking. MobiCom is the premier international forum addressing networks, systems, algorithms, and applications that support the symbiosis of mobile computers and wireless networks.

Give to support the next 60 years

Computing is the defining technology of our age, and since 1964 UD’s department of Computer & Information Sciences has prepared Blue Hens to build a better future.

Your support ensures that CIS has the resources to cultivate the next generation of revolutionary thinkers:

  • Scholarships to ensure all students can pursue their academic dreams at UD regardless of finances.
  • Professorships to recruit and retain top experts in computing fields.
  • Experiential learning opportunities that prepare CIS students for rewarding post-graduate outcomes.

Give today!