Mission and Vision

The mission of the Department of Informatics is to discover, teach and broadly disseminate fundamental knowledge concerning the design, use and evaluation of interconnected human, technological and organizational systems. Two highly synergistic research foci emphasizing people’s interaction with and through systems, and their informational content, respectively will provide the foundation for realizing this mission:

Human-Centered Computing (HCC) research centers on people (individuals, teams, businesses, organizations or societies) in all stages of information and communication technology development and use.  HCC includes studies on collaboration and technology design in areas such as social networking through web and pervasive (wireless) applications, game design, cognitive-based decision support, and educational innovation.

Information Integration and Informatics (III) research centers on the science of information and information processing. It focuses on the development and utilization of digital content, ranging from text in documents and web discussions to multimedia.  Our III expertise includes biomedical text mining, search engines,  recommender systems, security and pattern recognition, knowledge engineering, and health informatics.

Information Technology and IT Administration and Security draw on experienced IT faculty and the rich resources of the Ying Wu College of Computing Sciences to prepare students for a variety of careers spanning all facets of the information-age economy. At the undergraduate level, students can focus on various aspects of IT ranging from networks and security to game development and multimedia to the legal issues of IT. The BSIT program requires the completion of a common IT core, specialization courses of the student’s choice, additional electives, and a capstone project. Overall, our students emerge from our degree programs prepared to take on the many challenges facing the IT industry today and in the future.