CSE Chair Rajesh Gupta made the cover of the UC San Diego Extension Summer 2015 Catalog, which carries a cover story on "Taking Discovery Beyond Data". Writer John B.B. Freeman interviewed Gupta for the article about the ways in which computer science is exploring new frontiers and making advances possible in areas such as computational biology, bioinformatics, quantitative finance and much more, including the "smart grid that gauges more efficient electricity consumption."
"Education access, healthcare, electricity, water, transportation, emergency response, communications infrastructure, all of these have been improved because of computing," says Gupta in the interview. "These are not merely engineering issues, they are the issues of our everyday lives."
The article notes that in the five years that Gupta has been chair of the department, the data science revolution has exploded. "It's no longer just data in and data out," he notes. "In our department, we don't think of ourselves just as computer scientists or engineers who sit in backrooms and build these weird machines. We're the microscope that sees inside ourselves for new insights."
The cover story notes that following a rapid increase in enrollment, CSE pulled in the largest ever single alumni donation to the department to expand labs, programs and classroom space, allowing the department to pursue an "ambitious agenda of growth in the quality of learning experience by its students." "We have high aspirations," said Gupta. "Our faculty envisions this department at the very top regarding the quality of research we do, the students' learning experience, and fulfilling the growing demand for our graduates." The story also mentions the recent launch of Computing Primetime, a joint production by CSE and UCSD-TV, which is part of UC San Diego Extension.