Preparing Leaders for the 'Next Industrial Revolution'
Oregon State is launching a unique program for graduate study in artificial intelligence, with an initial cohort of about 40 students to be enrolled in fall 2021. The program is the first in the United States to offer both master’s and doctoral degrees in artificial intelligence as an interdisciplinary field of study.
“AI is what I like to call the outward-looking face of computer science,” said Prasad Tadepalli, the new program’s director and a professor of computer science. “Much of computer science is associated with how to make computers faster, better, cheaper, and so on. AI is more focused on how to apply computer science to other fields.”
In addition to offering courses and research opportunities in core AI topics — machine learning, knowledge representation, reasoning under uncertainty, sequential decision-making, natural language processing and computer vision — the program, which is supported by 30 faculty, allows students to choose relevant courses from a wide range of disciplines across the university.
“In the broader context of society, the goal of this program is to train individuals to be leaders in industry or academia, to start new companies, and to make their own contributions to this rapidly expanding field,” said Julie A. Adams, associate director of Oregon State’s Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute, and a professor of computer science.
The new AI program does not require a computer science degree as a prerequisite, said Alan Fern, associate head of research and professor of computer science.
“Often students who are well-poised to study artificial intelligence don’t come from a traditional computer science background,” he said. “The AI program is meant to be more flexible and will be enriched by having students with advanced knowledge in areas outside of computer science. Sometimes getting a domain expertise is much harder than getting the necessary expertise in computer science and statistics. People who have deep domain expertise plus knowledge and expertise in applying decision-making AI tools are going to be very highly sought in the job market.”