The University of California, Irvine’s Information and Computer Science has grown to become the largest in the UC system. And Michael Pazzani oversaw a big chunk of that expansion.
Pazzani was chair of UCI’s computer science department for the past five years. When he took over, the department had 500 undergraduates and 125 graduate students. Today, there are about some 1,350 undergraduate students and 265 graduate students,50 as part of the master’s program Pazzani had helped start as chair.
“What I’m actually proudest of is how the quality of the students went up,” Pazzani said.
As chair, Pazzani said he worked to recruit top students and helped start the department’s honors program. Average test scores during his tenure went up by about 100 points, he said.
Pazzani, who’s research area is artificial intelligence, is returning to teaching after turning over the department to Debra Richardson.
“Debra has been very well funded by the government on research projects,” he said. “She has a good balance similar to what I had in understanding what’s happening in the real world and what’s going to happen in five to 10 years, which is important to a research university.”
Despite a local shortage of technology workers, UCI should focus on more than just training undergraduates, Pazzani said. “There are tech schools that can do that,” he said. UCI’s aim should be on teaching “a lot of the theoretical stuff that lasts a student’s entire career.”
Pazzani has started up a company of his own in the nearby University Research Park. But he declined to talk about it saying only it’s in “stealth mode” for now.
Students and faculty members of the computer science department have founded a handful of companies, he said. But the University Research Park is just getting started as an incubator for research and talent at UCI, he said. And it faces tough competition.
“I don’t think the University Research Park is an important component of that, to be honest,” he said. “Companies tend to base themselves in the Irvine Spectrum or John Wayne Airport area.”
Pazzani’s current research covers the machine learning component of how artificial intelligence acquires knowledge through experience.
