Faculty Recruitment

Substantial numbers of growth and retirement FTE faculty appointments would be required to make this Initiative successful. In addition to supporting the need for graduate education and leading research programs in CS&E, faculty hired under this Initiative should be expected to help with the delivery of existing courses with large student enrollments, e.g., introductory computer science courses, and the development and delivery of new CS&E courses, in the context of both undergraduate and graduate education. Concerning a hiring strategy, one could build CS&E by implementing either a top-down or a bottom-up approach. The top-down approach would be based on the model of identifying leading and internationally recognized CS&E faculty, attempting to recruit them to UC Davis, and providing these faculty with the means to define and shape CS&E. The bottom-up approach would be centered around the idea of bringing together current CS&E faculty from the campus and recruit additional faculty that would complement the current faculty. The Committee believes that there are advantages and disadvantages to both strategies. Hiring a few senior faculty during the early stages of CS&E development might be advantageous. Realistically, it would not be easy to hire senior faculty in CS&E as it is still an emerging and relatively young discipline. The initial hiring of senior people could provide the visibility and leadership needed to make UC Davis a leader in CS&E. In addition, CS&E faculty members should qualify for joint appointments linking at least two departments. A campus committee consisting of current CS&E faculty should, in close collaboration with individual departments, identify priority areas targeted for hiring during the first rounds of recruitment. Individual departmental plans should be considered in hiring new CS&E faculty. New faculty should be able to contribute to existing departments as much as to the CS&E Initiative itself. We discuss specific recruitment issues in the following paragraphs.

• Requested Number of FTEs. We recommend the allocation of a total of 15 FTEs for the recruitment of new faculty members under the CS&E Initiative, over a six-year recruitment period. A typical CS&E faculty appointment would, in most cases, be a joint appointment between the organizational unit responsible for CS&E and another department. Flexibility will be required concerning such joint appointments, and it is reasonable to expect that new faculty could have any percentage of their appointment be counted as CS&E. Therefore, the requested number of FTEs would eventually lead to a much larger number of new faculty members with a CS&E component to their interests. The majority of new faculty appointed under the CS&E Initiative should be able to contribute to the needs of all the units in which they would hold appointments and the development of CS&E in its own right¹¹.
• Role of Current UC Davis CS&E Faculty. The UC Davis faculty members involved in the preparation of this CS&E Initiative report represent only a fraction of current UC Davis faculty interested in the teaching of or research in CS&E areas. We suggest that a faculty committee be formed as soon as possible with the responsibility of coordinating and overseeing the early phase of recruiting in CS&E and handling other issues, like curricular development. This would be necessary during the transitional period eventually leading to a formal CS&E unit.
• Student Demand for CS&E. Initially, courses supporting an undergraduate minor in CS&E (and a graduate minor or major) in CS&E should be developed in close collaboration with those disciplines interested in having their students minor in CS&E or impacted by the teaching of new CS&E courses. Of course, in order to have a Graduate Group in CS&E, there must be a graduate major in CS&E. The involvement of Computer Science would be crucial in this process. It is reasonable to expect that between 5% and 25% of all undergraduate students in the sciences and engineering disciplines (depending on their primary field of study) would have an interest in minoring in CS&E. It is much harder to estimate this for other disciplines. The Committee assumes that departments would change their current undergraduate curricular requirements in order to foster the minor option in CS&E. Pursuing a minor in CS&E should not impact the amount of time it takes a student to graduate. The percentage of graduate students in the physical sciences and engineering disciplines with an interest in adding CS&E as an area of emphasis or to pursue a graduate degree in CS&E should also lie between 5% and 25%.
• Retirement FTEs. CS&E is an evolving area, and the number of FTEs becoming available from retirement of faculty already working in this area is likely to be very small over the next six years. It is recommended that those departments and divisions having a strong interest in CS&E identify retirement FTEs that could potentially be used to leverage this Initiative.
• Joint Appointments with LLNL and LBNL. LLNL and LBNL have a strong interest in closely working with UC Davis, for a multitude of reasons--the major ones being access to students and university research. Faculty and students, on the other hand, gain insight into large-scale applied problems, students become more competitive for summer internships, and the campus obtains access to high-performance computing environments through collaborations. LLNL, LBNL, and faculty candidates who interviewed with UC Davis in the past often articulated a strong interest in joint university-laboratory appointments. This should be fully exploited when recruiting new CS&E faculty, and the campus should view this type of joint appointment positively.
• Fields Targeted for CS&E Recruitment. The Committee recommends--considering existing CS&E strengths and perceived future needs of UC Davis--this list of fields to be targeted for CS&E faculty recruitment (not ordered according to priority): (i) generic areas: numerical analysis, numerical linear algebra, and numerical methods for solving differential equations; Monte Carlo methods; discrete and experimental mathematics; machine learning, encompassing data analysis, data mining, clustering, classification, pattern recognition, neural networks, genetic algorithms, and feature extraction; optimization, including combinatorial optimization; visualization and virtual reality; information and database systems, with an emphasis on scientific and engineering data modeling; and algorithm development concepts for CS&E; and (ii) application-specific areas: biofluid dynamics; bioinformatics and structural/functional genomics (leveraging the Initiative for a Center for Functional Genomics and Bioinformatics); computational biology, including computational molecular biology; computational neuroscience; computational physics/cosmology; ecosystem modeling; and digital arts, e.g., virtual reality for design, computer graphics animation in relation to the performing arts, or computer music¹². A serious CS&E effort would eventually involve a several campus units, and it would be important to coordinate the prioritization of fields targeted for CS&E recruitment with all units carrying out actual science and engineering applications. The responses provided in section 3, entitled How CS&E Relates to Existing Plans at UC Davis, provide a first guideline for ranking the listed generic and application-specific CS&E areas according to the needs of the various units affected by and interested in the CS&E Initiative.