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July 30, 2008, 03:47 PM ET
An Interdisciplinary Vision of Computer Science
Richard A. DeMillo is stepping down as dean of Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Computing. During his six-year tenure at the college, Mr. DeMillo expanded the college’s research funds by 60 percent and increased the number of faculty members by 40 percent. A former chief technology officer at Hewlett-Packard, Mr. DeMillo plans to write technology books after he leaves the dean’s office November 1. Then he will return to the university to teach computing and management.
Q. You told Cox News Service that your decision to resign was prompted by disagreements with the university’s provost. Can you elaborate?
A. Any questions about what the provost’s perceptions might be need to be addressed to him. I’m in the dark about that.
Q. What was your next big priority for the college of computing?
A. We’ve been working on establishing schools in biomedical informatics and information science. Those are still in the development stage.
Q. What are the technology books you’re writing?
A. One is a book with a business focus. I’ve helped foster three or four business revolutions. The most recent was the merger of HP with Compaq. In each of those transformations there’s a technologist’s story to be told. The second book will probably be a textbook about Web science.
Q. What areas will you focus on as a professor?
A. On the management side I’m going to be focused on technology innovation, from defining and incubating small companies to innovation in large organizations. My computing interest is in areas like Web science. One of the things that attracts me to spanning both areas is the chance to put programs in place that really bridge computing and business in interesting ways.
Q. What kind of person would be best qualified to take your place?
A. My preference would be to have someone with strong leadership skills that would continue along the direction that we’ve started, very externally focused, an interdisciplinary person who has a real passion for helping the country define the boundaries of computing.
Q. Why is computer science attracting more interest among students?
A. Georgia Tech had a role in that. We started redefining what computer science meant when the dot-com bust was hitting academic computer-science departments. One of our real accomplishments was to get the Computing Research Association to form a subcommittee on computing education.—-Andrea L. Foster
Categories: Computer-Science
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