The Computer Science Department at University of New Orleans has a strong reputation for excellence in teaching and instructional innovation. We hold ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accreditation, and are selected as a Category I program by the State of Louisiana University Board of Regents.

The Department offers B.S. and MS degrees in Computer Science, and is a full participant in the Engineering and Applied Sciences (multidisciplinary) Ph.D program. With 387 undergraduates, 69 M.S. students, and 10 Ph.D students (2004/2005), UNO’s Computer Science Department is the largest in the Greater New Orleans area.

The Department has a solid record of accomplishment regarding teaching excellence and is on the fast track towards research eminence. This statement can be justified on the following grounds:

• As part of the normal cycle of B.S program review in Computer Science, a committee headed by the Louisiana Board of Regents (LaBoR) to evaluate the Computer Science programs at public universities in Louisiana rated the department as being a “Category 1” department, the highest rating possible.

• UNO’s Computer Science Department is currently a NSF REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) site for Research in Spatio-Temporal Information Systems.

• The State of Louisiana (through its IT initiative) and the Greater New Orleans area (through its TECHVISION 2020 project) have made the fostering of Information Technology a priority. UNO's Computer Science has been one of the main beneficiaries of these two initiatives. Towards this end, our department has received major funding from these IT inititatives. This provides very competitive funding for five new faculty positions, highly competitive start up funds for these positions, and computing equipment for a number of research & instructional laboratories.

• Dr Stephen Winter-Hilt, a junior faculty member hired though the above State IT initiative, recently obtained the prestigious "Career Transition Award For Informatics" from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The $486,000 award, provides almost half a million dollars to cover expenses associated with experiments, post doc/student wages, travel, etc., over the next three years.

• Thanks to the junior faculty members hired through the State IT initiative, UNO’s Computer Science has six on-going BoR (Board of Regents) RCS (Research Competitiveness Sub-program) funded proposals totaling $628,882. It is worth noting that two of these were ranked number one state wide. This also represents the largest number of active BoR RCS awards secured by a single UNO Department and in most likelihood by a Computer Science Department in the State of Louisiana.

• The number of new grants/contracts being submitted and funded continues its steady increase. Indeed, 20 grants/contracts totaling $1,757,569 (compared to 15 grants totaling $1,213,801 secured during the 2003/04 academic year) have been approved for funding during the 2004/05 academic year.

• Current grants/contracts in force amount to a total of $2,772,420.

• The publication rate and quality of our faculty members have seen a sharp increase in the last few years. Research work of our faculty members appears in proceedings of top international conferences, and in mainstream journals and magazines.

You are cordially invited to explore our website.

Mahdi Abdelguerfi
Professor & Chair

(last update: January 2006)