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The
History of CITRIS: A Campaign to Re-engineer Engineering
The
idea for the Center for Information Technology Research in the
Interest of Society, or CITRIS, really began more than a year
ago. Like most grand ideas, it evolved in response to several
simultaneous changes taking place in the world and in the field
of engineering, at UC Berkeley and elsewhere.
UC Berkeley's
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences (EECS)
has been holding a get-together every Friday afternoon for
quite a while. Organized at the suggestion of professor David
Patterson, the weekly gathering is a time for faculty to come
together at the end of the week to "think great thoughts"
and ponder the grand challenges of research and instruction
that keep faculty working at an institution like UC Berkeley
rather than heading off to a start-up or a dot-com.
At a gathering
in September 1999, during a discussion of what is next for
computer sciences and electrical engineering, the faculty
agreed that the real opportunities for impact in research
lay not in computer science for its own sake, but in its application
to other areas in society and in industry. After all, the
various disciplines associated with information technology
had focused their efforts largely on developing and promoting
their own fields for more than half a century, and especially
over the past 25 years. It seemed to these faculty members
that it was about time researchers in the field began a concerted
effort to apply their tools and techniques to grand-challenge
problems that cross the boundaries between disciplines.
An obvious
first area of application is bioengineering and bioinformatics.
"Wouldn't it be great if Berkeley was known for developing
the 'plumbing of bioinformatics'?" suggested professor Eric
Brewer. "What if we were to develop the algorithms, software
tools, and techniques needed to form the platform upon which
our colleagues in the biosciences could perform the research
needed to mine the full potential of the human genome project?"
Other areas of application were also proposed and discussed,
but most important was the realization among the faculty that
this idea was an important one - that the idea of applying
information technology broadly to other engineering disciplines
and in areas well beyond engineering, including the humanities,
social sciences and the arts, was a compelling one. Something
important had been identified in this discussion - the seed
of an important idea had been sown, and it needed to be pursued
further.
Quite independently,
professor Paul Gray, then dean of engineering at UC Berkeley,
planned an off-site workshop for the heads of the departments
in the college in early February 2000 to discuss and plan
the future of UC Berkeley's College of Engineering. How should
the college tackle some of the key challenges facing engineering
in the years to come, such as growth, distance education and
lifelong learning, and the balance among the various engineering
disciplines? One topic that emerged in preparing for the workshop
was the fact that engineering, as a discipline, has progressed
with an organizational structure that has been largely unchanged
for more than half a century now - the central disciplines
of civil, mechanical, electrical, industrial and materials
engineering have existed separately for a long time. In the
light of the rapid progress in the application of information
technology and computing to all fields related to science
and engineering, Gray's task force proposed that it was time
to revisit these disciplines and readdress the fundamental
question: what does it really mean to be an engineer in today's
world? What are the fundamental skills and understanding that
make someone a successful engineer today?
Information
technology runs through all the disciplines of engineering
- civil engineers are building complex information systems,
mechanical engineers are at work designing new micromachines
no bigger that a match head, electrical engineers are designing
complex optical processors, and industrial engineers are developing
new business systems. Adib Kanafani, chair of UC Berkeley's
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, summarized
the challenge: "We need to re-engineer engineering in the
context of today's world." The ideas that emerged from this
workshop have led college of Engineering administrators and
faculty to contemplate an entirely new approach to undergraduate
engineering education, as well as how to organize cross-disciplinary
engineering research. While the college continues to focus
on engineering fundamentals, it can also embrace this new
approach reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of engineering
as it is often practiced today. In fact, an increasing number
of cross-disciplinary research programs have emerged in the
college over the years. In many ways, this thinking was the
clear recognition of what was already an emerging trend and
the need to embrace it even further.
On March
15, 2000, EECS held its annual meeting of the Industrial Advisory
Board (IAB), comprised of CEOs and chief technologists from
a number of major corporations and research laboratories throughout
the world. This year, a dozen members of the board attended
the meeting and professor Richard Newton, then chair of EECS,
invited another dozen faculty to participate in the day. Rather
than adhere to the usual set of presentations and discussions,
Newton decided to ask the IAB to help the department with
two pressing issues: should UC Berkeley EECS step up even
further to the cross-disciplinary research opportunity supported
so strongly in the Friday afternoon discussions, and how should
the department tackle the growing need for lifelong and distance
learning, both to support alumni as well as to make a UC Berkeley
engineering education available to many more Californians?
The meeting
was organized as two half-day brainstorming and discussion
sessions, with breakout groups of faculty and advisors hard
at work for more than two hours on each topic. When the group
broke for the day, the recommendations were clear: cross-disciplinary
research offered the potential for high-impact programs in
the department, both in research as well as instruction -
it was a unique and important opportunity that should not
be missed. Even more exciting to the group was the particular
research emphasis identified by the group. Rather than simply
tackling the tough but obvious research problems related to
the Internet or to new technologies in their own right, to
organize and focus such an interdisciplinary effort, the group
recommended the research tackle tough social problems as its
main emphasis. That is, UC Berkeley should consider using
problems that, if solved, would have a clear role in improving
the quality of people's lives - on a global scale.
"Tackle
the grand-challenge social problems of today. Create the architectures,
the vision, and the fundamental technologies. Build prototype
solutions and prove the value and importance of your work.
Then industry will find a way to fill in the gaps and deliver
the commercial versions of the technology," was the recommendation
from the group. "Involve sociologists and cognitive scientists;
involve experts on policy and privacy issues; involve the
likely users of the technology; make sure the work that you
do really does lead to a better world and not just a more
complex and more technically brittle one." How obvious! What
a great idea! If universities like UC Berkeley do not work
on such important problems, then who will? Once these recommendations
were circulated to the faculty at large, the level of excitement
in departmental e-mail exchanges increased immediately. "But
how can we do it? Where will we get the resources to tackle
such problems - they will require a very large scale of investment
if we are to have any chance of solving them."
It was
around this time that the department became aware of Gov.
Gray Davis's proposal for a new set of institutes - the California
Institutes for Science and Innovation (CISI) program - to
be implemented on or near University of California campuses.
The CISI program represents a bold and exciting vision, intended
to renew the foundations of excellence in this world-renowned
university system and to leverage the university's resources
even further to enhance the California economy. Perhaps this
program would provide the opportunity to launch UC Berkeley's
new agenda. As soon as the request for proposals was released,
professors Gray and Newton asked professor James Demmel of
EECS to solicit interest from the faculty and to investigate
the possibility of proposing a cross-disciplinary research
institute to tackle tough social problems using an information
technology-centered approach. Demmel sent e-mail to the faculty
in the College of Engineering at Berkeley, to other faculty
across the UC Berkeley campus, and to groups at UC Santa Cruz
and UC Davis as well. He was overwhelmed by the response.
More than 170 faculty, from throughout the campus and from
Davis and Santa Cruz, replied enthusiastically that they wanted
to contribute to this important idea. For many, finding good
reason to work with world-class faculty and students in other
areas was the key attraction - the cross-disciplinary aspect
of the work - while, for others, the chance to work on grand-challenge
social problems, where the emphasis was on helping society
as a whole, was the main attraction. But no matter what the
motivation, Demmel received resounding support for the idea
and the proposal for a Center for Information Technology Research
in the Interest of Society was born.
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