HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
617-495-1585

RELEASE: MORNING PAPERS OF MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 1972
UNIVERSITY NEWS OFFICE

Harvard University now has a Center for Research in Computing Technology.

This new Center, organized to provide a focus at Harvard for research and
teaching in computer science, will coordinate course offerings, graduate
training, and research; seek resources to support research; and provide
expertise to faculty members and students in other parts of the University.

Harvard always has had great strength in computer science from the time in the
1940s when Professor Howard Aiken and I.B.M. built the Mark I, the first
digital comuter.  But advancement of both pure and applied parts of the
science -- as opposed to providing services at the existing state of the art
to students, faculty and administration -- has gone on in several parts of the
University, most of it under the rubric of "applied mathematics" in the
Division of Engineering and Applied Physics in the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences.  Interaction among these groups was purely ad hoc and informal.

The new Center emerges from the 1970 report of a Faculty Committee appointed
in 1968.  That committee recommended a structure for the Center closely tied
to the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics, but recommended against a
new academic department, in order to avoid isolation from other disciplines.

In research, the Center has a broad concern with improving the interface
between the computer and the user, making the computer more readily, easily,
and efficiently usable in a wide variety of applications.  Contributing to
this is a variety of research projects, including investigations in such
diverse areas as computer languages, automation of programming, mathematics
(including logic and automata theory), artificial intelligence, and
organization of systems and hardware (actual computer equipment).  Some of the
products of this research are already being used in several areas of the
University and, in particular, many are being used by Harvard students in
classroom exercises and in pursuing applications in their fields of interest.

The Center will eventually have four tenured professorships in the so-called
"core" areas of computer science.  The first of these is occupied by Thomas
E. Cheatham jr., who is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and
Director of the Center.  It is further anticipated that there will be several
joint appointments with other Schools and Departments of the University,
providing bridges to applications of computer science, in such areas as
medicine, design, business, education, and law.  There will also be an
appropriate number of non-tenured appointments.

As an example of the work of the Center, computer graphics groups in the
Division of Engineering and Applied Physics and the Graduate School of Design
are beginning to work together more closely.  Also, the Center is advising the
Office of Information Technology, the University-wide coordinator of computer
services for administration.

The Center also is collaborating with E.J. Corey, who is the Sheldon Emery
Professor of Organic Chemistry, in his pioneering development of
oomputer-aided synthesis of complex molecules.

Staff members of the Center have organized a series of informal colloquia on
topics of research interest and are producing a series of technical papers.

Dr. Bradford Dunham, Research Staff Member of the Thomas J. Watson Research
Center of the IBM Corp., is giving the first series of Distinguished Lectures
under auspices of the Center.  His 10 talks on "Computer Science and Its
Applications" are being taped for closed-circuit replay for those unable to
attend in person.

Dr. Ruth M. Davis, Director of the Center for Computer Science and Technology
of the National Bureau of Standards, will give three lectures in March on the
interaction of computer science with issues of public policy.

The Center is organized with Members, Associates, Visiting Fellows, an
executive committee, a policy committee, the Director and an Associate
Director.

Members of the Center are faculty members with appointments in computer
science or in computer science and another field.  Other members of the
University using copputer science in their own work may become Associates;
they will have space and facilities at the Center.  Visiting Fellows, from
government or industry, will spend short periods of advanced study and
research at the Center.  Others without faculty status may be appointed
Research Associates.  Members and Associates will bring to the Center their
graduate students and post-doctoral research fellows.

The Executive Committee, made up of the Members of the Center, will provide
operational guidance and propose appointments of Associates, Visiting Fellows,
and Research Associates.  The Policy Committee to provide guidance has been
appointed by the Corporation and is made up of the tenured Members of the
Center plus representatives from other faculties concerned.