Computer Science

Related Student Organizations and University Programs

Career Paths

Students in all three degree programs of computer science are well prepared to move directly into the professional world. Recent alumni have secured the following positions:

2nd Lieutenant, United States Army Reserve
Application Developer, High Performance Technologies, Inc.
Application Developer, Vanguard
Associate Software Engineer, E*Trade Financial Corp.
Business Technology Analyst, Deloitte Consulting
Computer Engineer, Department of Defense
Developer, Vanguard
Executive, Netprice.com
Information Management Leadership Program, GE Energy
Sales and Product Manager, Environmental Integrity, Co.
Software Developer, High Performance Technologies, Inc.
Software Development Engineer, Amazon
Software Engineer, Aberdeen Proving Grounds
Software Engineer, Discovery Machine, Inc.
Software Programmer, Vanguard

Grants & Awards

Bucknell’s computer science faculty members have recently received the following grants and awards:

Prof. L. Felipe Perone received a $10,000 award from the IEEE Real World Engineering Projects Program, in 2011, for his ENGR 100 seminar. This curricular module is freely available for worldwide adoption at the program website.
Prof. L. Felipe Perrone received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in support of the "Frameworks for ns-3" project, which is being developed in collaboration with the University of Washington and Georgia Tech.
Prof. Haggard was invited by the world-famous Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Science of Cambridge University in England as a Visiting Fellow for the institute in June 2008. The Fellowship is supported by the National Science Foundation.

Selected Faculty Publications

Computer science faculty members’ scholarship has recently appeared in the following publications:

Journals

Ars Combinatoria

IEEE Security & Privacy

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

International Journal of Intelligent Information Technologies

SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications

SIMULATION: Transactions of The Society for Modeling and Simulation International

Books

Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science (Gary Haggard, co-author)

What's in a Compiler: A Tutorial View of Compiler Construction (Jerud Mead, author)

Internships

Many of Bucknell’s computer science students gain hands-on skills and career experience through summer internships in various industries and research labs. Recently, students have interned at:

Bucknell University Computer Center
Bucknell University Library & Information Technology
Amazon
Alcatel-Lucent
Deloitte Consulting
GE Energy
Visual Learning Systems
Northrop Grumman
Lockheed Martin
PepsiCo
Human Engineering Research Laboratories, VA Hospital Pittsburgh

Study Abroad

No matter which degree in computer science they choose, students often have the flexibility to study abroad. In recent years, computer science students have studied in Australia, Barbados, England, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Spain.

Computer science students are encouraged to study abroad at such locations as the University of London (Queen Mary), Kings College London, and the University of Nottingham in England, the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne in Australia, Limerick University in Ireland, Sterling University in Scotland, University of West Indies in Barbados, Hamilton College in Spain, Temple University in Italy, and Bucknell in London.

Computer science and engineering students can also take advantage of ENGR 290 Engineering in Global/Societal Context, an academically strong, three-week summer program that has taken students with Bucknell faculty to Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, and Switzerland in recent years.

Graduate School

Computer science majors often choose to pursue graduate or professional degrees after their time at Bucknell. The list below indicates recent programs that have offered admission to our graduates and/or where they have gone to pursue advanced degrees:

Bucknell University
Boston University
University of California Irvine
University of Cincinnati
Georgia Institute of Technology
Johns Hopkins University
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
North Carolina State University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
University of Rochester
Syracuse University
University of Utah
Vanderbilt University
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
College of William & Mary

Program Details

Students can choose from among three computer science degrees: 1) the Bachelor of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences, 2) the Bachelor of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences and 3) the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering, which is offered by the College of Engineering.
Bucknell’s computer science program offers the flexibility to combine computer science with other academic interests.
The computer science core courses focus on principles and hands-on experience. All except one of these core courses have a weekly laboratory where students learn and refine their skills.
Students in computer science complete a major design project in their senior year. Students gain formal design experience that integrates and applies basic computer science to the process of system design and implementation.
Students enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts degree program may combine their studies with another academic program to complete a double major.
The University offers two five-year dual degrees: 1) a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in the liberal arts and 2) a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering and Bachelor of Management for Engineers degree.

Faculty

Students learn from 10 full-time computer science faculty members with interests spanning the range of the discipline: graphics, networks, distributed computing, databases, object-oriented technologies, programming languages, algorithms, simulation, security, software engineering, web-based information retrieval and theory.

Stephen M. Guattery
B.A. Swarthmore; B.S. MIT; M.S.E. Michigan; Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon
Scholarly interests: graph partitioning and spectral methods

Gary Haggard
B.S. Seattle; M.S., Ph.D. Purdue
Scholarly interests: data structures and graph theory; research in data structures includes implementation of effective algorithms for computing invariants for large combinatorial structures

Daniel C. Hyde
B.S. Northeastern; Ph.D. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Scholarly interests: parallel computation, cluster computing and distributed computing

Brian R. King
B.S., M.S., Ph.D. SUNY University at Albany
Scholarly interests: bioinformatics, data mining, machine learning, user interface design and usability

Xiannong Meng
B.S. Southeast University, China; M.S., Ph.D.Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Scholarly interests: intelligent web search, computer networks, operating systems

Luiz Felipe Perrone
Electrical Engineer UFRJ, Brazil; M.S. COPPE/UFRJ, Brazil; M.S., Ph.D.William & Mary
Scholarly interests: simulation, wireless networking, security

Benoit Razet
Magistere/M.S. Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI; Ph.D. Université Denis Diderot - Paris VII
Scholarly interests: formal methods, proof assistants, automata theory, Kleene algebras, functional programming

Joshua Steinhurst
B.S. University of Vermont; M.S., Ph.D. University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Scholarly interests: computer graphics (global illumination, graphics hardware), atmospheric optics

Lea Wittie
B.A. Grinnell; Ph.D. Dartmouth
Scholarly interests: programming language support for operating system constructs, type theory to move run-time checks to compile time

Richard Zaccone
B.S. Villanova; Ph.D. Penn State
Scholarly interests: software engineering, software design

Undergraduate Research

At Bucknell, students have many opportunities to gain practical experience and to engage in scholarly pursuits outside the classroom -- as teaching assistants in labs, as campus computer consultants for Library and Information Technology, as research assistants on projects during the summer, and as independent researchers in close collaboration with faculty. Recent titles of summer projects and honors theses include:

A Comparison of Wireless Network Protocols from a Simulation Perspective
An Experiment Design Framework for the Simulator for Wireless Ad hoc Networks
An Examination of Software Engineering Techniques through a Case Study of Facebook
An Investigation of the Human-Computer Interaction on Multi‐Touch Handheld Devices
Designing, Implementing, and Testing of a Intelligent Crawler to Support Vertical Search
A Mechanism for Transient Detection in Metrics Estimated with the ns-3 Network Simulator
An Execution Manager for Parallel Simulation Experiments with ns-3
Developing an XML Language for Credible Wireless Network Simulation
Towards the Interactive Simulation of Ice Halos in the Open Sky
A Graphical User Interface for a Neural Network Simulation Software Suite
A Novel Query Reordering Algorithm to Reduce Photon Mapping Bandwidth
Building a Neural Network to Differentiate Document Types
Remote Reconfiguration of Xilinx FPGA over a Network
Automated Optimization Study of Attack Models for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Facilities & Resources

Bucknell’s computer science program is supported by state-of-the-art computing laboratories that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Computer science courses make use of the College of Engineering's extensive workstation environment. Computing facilities include:

An instructional space with 13 Linux computers and private networking to support systems courses, such as networks, security, and operating systems, as well as research and experimentation.
Two instructional labs equipped with a total of 61 Intel Linux and Mac computers for use in structured, hands-on activities that complement lectures, as well as in student projects.
Various College and University public computing labs equipped with Windows computers.
A non-instructional lab equipped with 10 dual-monitor Linux machines, a high-definition screen, white board and work tables, where students congregate to work in individual and team projects.
A computer graphics research area featuring two high-end workstations with professional GPUs. This area is used for modeling, animation and research into fundamental graphics algorithms. It is complemented by video editing resources in the College and University spaces.
A special projects lab with computing equipment and literature to support the research activities of faculty and students.
Three remote access servers installed with modern software development tools for student use.
A group of remote access servers (the Linux Computing Cluster) set up for the purpose of running computationally intensive jobs. These systems have multiple processors, each with multiple cores, and large amounts of memory.
A powerful multi-processor, multi-core Linux server for dedicated use in parallel and distributed computing research.

The Computing Research Association sponsors a Distributed Mentoring Program for women computer science majors. The project matches women undergraduates with women mentors for a summer of research at the mentor’s institution. Recent Bucknell participants have studied at Brown University, the University of Utah, Colorado School of Mines, Georgia Tech, the University of Delaware and the University of Minnesota.

Students can make use of resources such as the Program for Undergraduate Research, the Institute for Leadership in Technology and Management and the Small Business Development Center to pursue interests that complement the education they receive from the department.

Programming contests, research presentations, study breaks, picnics and other activities are organized by the student chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery, an international computing professional organization.

Courses Offered

Capstone Computer Science Design
Compiler Optimization
Computer and Network Security
Computer Architecture
Computer Graphics
Computer Networks
Computer Organization and Programming
Computer Science Honors Thesis
Computer Science Individual Study
Computer Science Capstone
Computers and Society
Data Structures
Distributed Computing
Introduction to Analysis of Algorithm
Introduction to Computer Science I and II
Introduction to a Microcomputer Environment
Introduction to Database
Operating Systems Design
Programming Language Design
Senior Design I and II
Theory of Computation
Topics in Computer Science
Web Information Retrieval

Quick Facts

Number of full-time faculty: 10

Average number of majors per class year: 19