COMPUTER SCIENCE
Faculty and students in computer science investigate a wide range of topics, including ground-breaking work in provably secure cryptography, the implementation of sensor nets, developments at the interface of economics and computer science, and discoveries in VLSI.
Computer science is inside of a dynamic hub that links to the rest of the University, from programs in Applied Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Statistics, and Systems Biology, to Harvard's professional schools in medicine and business.
Areas of Focus
Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics
Developing techniques for improving human–computer communication and collaboration in problem solving; modeling the behavior of intelligent communication systems; developing algorithms and representation languages for probabilistic and game-theoretic reasoning; mechanism design and automated negotiation for bounded-rational agents
Researchers
Chen, YilingGajos, Krzysztof
Grosz, Barbara J.
Nagpal, Radhika
Parkes, David C.
Pfeffer, Avrom J.
Shieber, Stuart M.
Research Groups
Artificial IntelligenceElectronic Commerce
Design of markets and mechanisms; applications to automated negotiation; applications to network resource allocation and negotiation in peer-to-peer systems in distributed systems
Researchers
Chen, YilingOettinger, Anthony G.
Parkes, David C.
Research Groups
Economics and Computer ScienceGraphics
Techniques to render images efficiently; techniques to simulate light; developing data structures and algorithms to represent 3-D geometric objects and environments
Researchers
Gortler, Steven J.Pfister, Hanspeter
Zickler, Todd
Research Groups
Graphics, Vision, & Interaction (GVI)Languages, Compilers, and Tools
Creating new application-specific languages for solving targeted problems; the analysis and modification of binary code to help code performance and security; compiler-construction techniques that make compiler infrastructure reusable; adapting compilers and other low-level tools to support work on new ideas in run-time systems and machine architectures
Researchers
Chong, StephenMorrisett, Greg
Smith, Michael D.
Networking and Systems
Developing high performance software and hardware systems; extensible operating systems and storage systems; runtime virtual machines supporting dynamic optimizations; security for high-performance networks; wireless sensor networks; power-aware computer architectures and software
Researchers
Brooks, David M.Chong, Stephen
Kung, H.T.
Morrisett, Greg
Seltzer, Margo I.
Smith, Michael D.
Welsh, Matthew D.
Research Groups
Graphics, Vision, & Interaction (GVI)Internet
Systems Research at Harvard (SYRAH)
Theory of Computation
Understanding the mathematical laws governing efficient computation; the design and analysis of algorithms; computational complexity; error-correcting codes; cryptography; learning theory and cognitive computation; logic in computer science; randomness in computation; quantum computation; computational algebra and number theory; parallel computation
Researchers
Lewis, Harry R.Mitzenmacher, Michael D.
Rabin, Michael O.
Vadhan, Salil P.
Valiant, Leslie G.
Research Groups
Theory of Computation