! ConduDEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE t Brown University // Vol. 27 IN MEMORIAM: PETER WEGNER AN INFLECTION POINT: HCRI LOOKS AHEAD TO SIROS 3 IGNITECS @ BROWN Notes From The Chair It’s a pleasure to be writing to all of you again just help us connect with other Brown groups, a few months after our last issue came out. I wrote including Public Health; Cognitive, Linguistic, my most recent note as we were preparing for and Psychological Sciences; and Economics. We’re Commencement, but with this issue, we’re changing planning to recruit several new faculty members this the publication cycle. Instead of the end of the year, focusing on data science and computational academic year, we’ll be coming to you at the end of biology, in collaboration with the Data Science the calendar year, so our next issue will appear in Initiative. late 2018. Other good news includes special recognition that I’d like to start with the exciting news that Computer our faculty members received at the end of last Science is now the single largest concentration at semester. Maurice Herlihy and Tim Kraska won, Brown! Last May, we handed out a record number respectively, Brown’s inaugural Research Innovation of 205 diplomas, easily beating our previous records and Early Career Research Achievement Awards. of 168 a year ago and 131 two years ago. This is We’re delighted that the research accomplishments of BY UGUR CETINTEMEL an increase of 22% just from last year and 56% our colleagues have been acknowledged with these in only two years! This interest is a testament to two (out of a total of just five) prestigious, university- how exciting and powerful computer science has wide awards. become as a discipline and career path, as well as our Department’s continued commitment to offering a Unfortunately, I also have sad news to share: our CS program that’s second to none. Our preliminary colleague, Peter Wegner, passed away in July. Peter enrollment numbers already indicate growth of ~8% came to Brown almost 50 years ago, and he was from last year. a founder, a friend, and a remarkable computer scientist. His commitment to Brown CS and his As we welcome a record number of students to continued participation, even after he retired, have Brown CS this fall, I’d like to specifically thank my always been a blessing and inspiration for all of us. colleague, John Hughes (Spike), who has agreed to We will greatly miss him. serve as our Associate Chair. Spike’s leadership and support will be critical in addressing the needs of our As we approach the 40th anniversary of the founding growing and increasingly diverse community. of our Department, the CIT is bustling with people and activity. We’re looking forward to the year ahead I’d also like to welcome Ellie Pavlick, who will join and we’ll continue to share exciting news and stories our faculty this summer. Ellie recently received her as they develop. PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and will be doing a postdoc at Google Research before coming to Providence. Ellie works on natural language processing, machine learning, and crowdsourcing. She’ll strengthen our efforts in these areas and 2 FALL 2017 Table Of Contents Vol. 27 Published by the Department of Computer Science at Brown University, Conduit is distributed free to all computer science alums, faculty, staff, students, and industry partners. Queries about this publication can be directed to: 18 [email protected] or 115 Waterman Street Campus Box 1910 Providence, RI 02912 PUBLISHER Industry Partners Program, 14 Department of Computer Science EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 21 Jesse C. Polhemus DESIGN Creative Services 2 Notes From The Chair 27 Bootstrap Teaches Rigorous Data Science In An Introductory Computing CONDU¡T ON THE WEB FEATURES John Bazik Module For K-12 Students Kathy Billings 4 Toymaker 30 Max Salvas Retires After 12 In Memoriam: Peter Wegner PRINTING AND DISTRIBUTION Thirty-Four Years 14 Seeing Theory: Teaching Statistics Brett Turner, Information 36 Department Awards And Honors Services Through Interactive Web-Based 42 Recent PhDs Signature Printing Visualization 44 Around The Department 18 An Inflection Point: HCRI Looks Ahead To SIRoS 3 FACULTY 21 igniteCS@Brown 37 Faculty Notes DEPARTMENT NEWS AND HAPPENINGS ALUMS 24 Ellie Pavlick Joins Brown CS As 41 Alum Updates Assistant Professor 25 Building News4Good: A First Take At Software Engineering For Four Undergrads Conduit is printed on Burgo’s ChorusArt, an acid free and elemental chlorine free paper containing 50% recycled content and 15% post-consumer waste. You are the difference—reduce, reuse, recycle. CONDU¡T 3 It’s half past noon in CIT here, the string of fleeting moments that 368 on May 18, 2017. After tell a much bigger story. fourteen years of Senior Lecturer Barbara Meier’s We’re ready to wonder again. Barb’s computer animation classes about to hit the u button. at Brown, after months of focused effort, we have Take a moment to see it for yourself: go something very new, a first: to https://vimeo.com/242488116 and use Toymaker, a seven-minute contoyduit17 for the password. animated short. Not Knowing What The Recipe Every seat is full, and much of the floor. Would Make: Barbara Meier The lights are dimmed. In darkness, there’s room for multiplicity. The student Before story, history: Barb traces her who started the whole thing is here with interest in animation to when she her team of thirteen. There’s the teacher was twelve or thirteen. Her parents and mentor who didn’t just advise but disapprove of most daytime television, worked the long hours alongside them; so she watches when they aren’t home, here’s the composer who wrote the score and is awed by the hand-drawn work and helped perform it. Classmates from that she sees in an animated film festival. RISD as well as Brown are gathered, At first, a career as an animator seems friends and friends of friends, and the as unlikely as becoming an Olympic colleagues and experts who are maybe skater, but in the years that follow, Barb the only ones to fully understand the finds herself returning to the idea that scope of what’s been accomplished. animation is just drawing on paper. “It didn’t have to be this mysterious But why subdivide the ineffable? The process,” she says. “I felt like it was an flickering screen makes us all spectators actual possibility.” again. We’re drawn to the high spire, the telescope, to humankind’s mastery of art But there’s plenty of mystery to come or science on the grandest scale, but also along a zigzagging career path. Studying to the personal and small: the studio in computer science as a Brown undergrad, all its clutter, the Wozniakian garage, or Barb sees the potential for using 4 FALL 2017 computer graphics (CG) in animation and is drawn to auteur animation’s ability to Barb chooses realize the vision of a single animation in part artist. She credits Andy because of its van Dam for encouraging her to apply to the Brown immediacy: “It was this idea CS Master’s program, and that you could draw on paper, it postgraduate work follows wasn’t this mysterious process.” at RISD, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (their curriculum replicates the working life of an artist, an idea that Barb returns to later in her own teaching), and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Barb agrees to take on CS 195-9 (now CS 125) in mid-July of 2003. Beyond any Industry work catches Barb’s attention doubt, it’s trial by fire. She remembers first, and she spends almost a decade frantically picking software for the in California, creating animated effects course in August, trying to prepare and digital matte paintings. It isn’t easy: lectures with two small boys running long hours, constant pressure to work around the house, finishing her notes faster and lower costs, extremely narrow an hour before the class begins. She margins. “I knew it wasn’t going to says, “The one thing I think I did sustain me forever,” she says. “I wanted well was setting up a structure and kids, a life. It was a really great ride, but creating assignments. Right away, I I thought I could take what I’d learned saw the students doing really good everywhere and bring my industry work, exceeding expectations on every experience to students, even if I didn’t task I gave them.” Graduates of the know what the recipe would make.” A course often continued working with book about making a career change had Barb independently, which sparked recommended teaching, and with more the need for a second course, CS 128 than a little hesitation (Barb remembers Intermediate Computer Animation. One saying, “No, not that! That’s for people trend continues year after year: students who are washed-up.”) she returns to are coming to her with more interest in Brown. animation and better experience with it, so she continually moves content from the second course to the first. CONDU¡T 5 CS 125 presents students with the new That summer, Nellie interns at Pixar, and challenge of creating a short film at the CS 125 follows. It’s motivation enough end of the course. “But they’re really for a big project of her own, so she goes bare-bones,” Barb says, smiling. “It’s to Barb in November of 2015 with a an important project because it forces pitch for a new class.