Overview
With Silicon Valley Right Next Door, the UCSC Computer Science Program Puts Graduate Students Right on the Launch Pad
Silicon Valley -- the name is almost a cliché now, and movies have been made about the "early days" with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and the many bigger-than-life characters that have come and gone since those first heady days. Of course, Silicon Valley started long before the 1970s, which is when Apple Computer was born and a dozen different PC manufacturers were trying to get a foothold in the new "personal computer" market. The real founding of Silicon Valley goes back to two men, David Packard and William Hewlett, who formed Hewlett-Packard (HP) in a garage, as Jobs and partner Steve Wozniak would do 20+ years later.
The best, shortest definition for Silicon Valley is "Santa Clara County," stretching from Palo Alto in the north to San Jose (actually, Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister) in the south. Palo Alto, the bedroom community of Stanford University, can legitimately lay claim to being the "capital" of Silicon Valley, as it was home to such early high-tech firms as HP, Varian and Philco-Ford. Many early PC makers such as Eagle, Atari and Commodore set up shop closer to San Jose, in Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Los Gatos and Santa Clara. Today, Silicon Valley comprises the entire county and high-tech firms can be found in just about every city and unincorporated area. While Bostonians want to boast about Route 128, and citizens of North Carolina wax proud about their own Research Triangle, it remains true to this day that the most famous of all high-tech locales is, of course, Silicon Valley.
With Santa Clara County just a hop, skip and jump over the mountain from Santa Cruz, students and faculty at UCSC are able to develop many important relationships with the companies and individuals driving the technological revolution. Many graduates from UC's computer engineering and computer science programs need look no further than Silicon Valley for careers, and often do not even wait until graduation to stretch their entrepreneurial muscles. In addition to mentoring and research opportunities, graduate students can take advantage of the fact that many UC faculty members have working relationships and other interests in ongoing tech firms. Silicon Valley is very much like having the best collection of private laboratories in the world right next door, and UC faculty and students alike have taken advantage of the many opportunities it represents.
UCSC Computer Science Department Offers Almost Infinitely Flexible Ways to Attain an MS or PhD in an Ever-Evolving Field
The Department of Computer Science (CS) at UCSC offers almost infinitely flexible ways to obtain MS and PhD degrees, due to the incredible interdisciplinary reach of the studies and the evolving nature of the disciplines. The Computer Science Faculty actively cooperates with professors, graduate students and staff of other departments, ranging from art and design disciplines to other engineering fields. CS also maintains a strong, broadly capable research group for inquiries into biomolecular engineering, bioinformatics, human genome mapping and computational biology. Graduate students are immersed in their fields, and related ones, to ensure well-rounded, powerfully prepared computer scientists ready to work in academe, pure research or industry.
Particularly exciting areas of research range from analysis of algorithms, pattern recognition and retrieval, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer graphics, neural networks, scientific visualization, computer/sensor vision, computer animation, image processing and image synthesis to the frontiers of human-computer interaction. With state-of-the-art workstations and other requisite equipment, the various on-campus research facilities offer powerful assistance to faculty and students doing research on web and Internet engineering, programming languages and software engineering, working in areas that will impact literally hundreds of millions, even billions, of people on the planet. Research on computer security, storage systems, real-time embedded systems, parallel and distributed computing, database design, operating systems and other such advanced topics is often undertaken with partners from government and industry. Graduate students have the opportunity to get exceptionally valuable hands-on experience at any number of high-tech research facilities located in the triangle formed by Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Santa Cruz.
The CS faculty members, of course, have a historically close relationship with their counterparts in the Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Applied Mathematics and Statistics departments. Faculty members are involved across many disciplines in joint and group research projects, and even supervise students and teach courses in the other related departments. A powerful mix of class time, working in the research facilities, individual mentoring and teaching assistant opportunities results in thoroughly prepared science professionals ready for the challenge of industry, academe, government research or entrepreneurial pursuits. The MS degree, requiring either a master's thesis or approved project, is typically completed in two years, but it is possible to do it in one year. The PhD degree usually takes five years.
