Dear colleagues,
ladies and gentlemen,

Roughly one month into the Corona lockdown we might tend to focus on the challenges and difficulties of the current situation. But my impression is that there is much positive going on and the department is coping well with the crisis.

Computer scientists are privileged. While our labs are important, they don’t include attending to living creatures, as in other sciences, and much of our research can proceed in cyberspace. Also, in teaching and administration, we can move forward with many of our activities. I think we can agree that remote communication solutions are a poor substitute for physical presence, discussion, and interaction. But thankfully, they allow us to continue our department culture. Group meetings, lunches and after-work beer get-togethers are all being held in cyberspace.

What role does computer science play in our ability to cope so well with this crisis? The quality and quantity of services – video conferencing software, web-based shared document editing, data storage and synchronization – play a major part. These product developments are the result of research in our field. Taking a glimpse at the future, education could become infused with AI: user-modeling, content adaptation, natural language understanding, as well as problem generation and grading would be some interesting areas to explore. These advances give society a certain kind of resilience. At least parts of our activities can be shifted from the physical world into the virtual, and vice versa.

In the remainder of this edition you will learn about some of the other positive things going on at the department. Happy reading!

David Basin
Department Head