Overview
Society depends on computers for activities from maintaining social connections and entertainment (e.g., facebook, youtube, massive online multiplayer games, on-demand HD movies), financial management (e.g., stock-trading, online banking), personal health care and global health (e.g., online medical records and appointments, environmental sensing), and scientific advances (e.g., computational biology, computational chemistry, etc.). Regardless of specific use, a common theme emerges: society assumes pervasive, secure, available, cost-effective infrastructure.
Pervasive systems are accessible anywhere, anytime (e.g., smart phones, tablets) and may utilize services provided in the “cloud”. Secure systems ensure that important data is kept confidential and provide accountability. Similarly, systems must remain available for use in the presence of denial of service attacks, but equally important must be stable in the face of design bugs (both hardware and software) and hardware errors (both transient faults and manufacturing defects). Finally, cost-effective infrastructure provides the necessary services while minimizing cost of entry and long-term total cost of ownership.
The societal benefits of computing are enabled by developments and advances made in the broad interdisciplinary area of computer systems & engineering (CSE) which spans across computer science and electrical & computer engineering. With faculty from both departments, the Duke CSE group is positioned to address the educational and research challenges associated with society’s increasing dependence on computing.