UW Learning & Scholarly Technologies profiles UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska.
On the PCAST report
“During the summer of 2010, Lazowska co-chaired the Working Group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) that prepared a report titled Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology. According to Lazowska, the main messages of the report include:
- Advances in computer science have been a pivotal driver of economic prosperity over the last two decades.
- Current and ongoing technological and societal changes situate further advances in computing at the center of nearly every national priority: improved energy efficiency, education, transportation, health, etc.”
On workforce
“The PCAST report documents that computer science is by far the dominant factor in all U.S. science and technology employment. Job projections over the next eight years show 2/3 of all newly-created jobs in all fields of engineering and science (including the social sciences) will be computing jobs. Lazowska summarizes the situation bluntly, ‘The truth is there is no science and technology workforce gap; there is a computer science workforce gap.‘”
On “computational thinking”
“Lazowska argues that computational thinking, whether or not you’re computing, is becoming absolutely pervasive. … ‘No matter what they intend on studying or doing, students need to have a grounding in modern computational concepts.'”
Read the profile here.