2016 Distinguished Lecture Series: Tracy Camp

Putting a Dent in the Universe …

Featuring Dr. Tracy Camp, professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science – March 2016

Innovation — a term that is arguably overused this decade. What, exactly, does this word mean?

By definition, innovation is a new idea, a more effective device, or a better process. Clearly we’ve seen significant new ideas, more effective devices, and better processes in computing. In this talk, we’ll take a walk down history lane and consider several of the innovations in computing that have drastically changed our world.

We will also think about what it takes to change the world. Many of us want to innovate, and we want our innovations to be impactful, i.e., “to put a dent in the universe,” as Steve Jobs would say.  An important question, then, is: How do we innovate?

In computing, and I suspect fields outside of computing, one answer to this question is clear …

Tracy Camp is a professor of computer science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. Her current research interests include: the credibility of ad hoc network simulation studies, the use of wireless sensor networks in geosystems, and computer science education. Camp has received more than 25 grants from the National Science Foundation, including a prestigious NSF CAREER award. In total, her projects have received more than $20 million dollars in external funding. This funding has produced 12 software packages that have been requested from (and shared with) more than 3,000 researchers in 86 countries (as of October 2012).

She has published over 100 refereed articles, and these articles have been cited more than 10,000 times (per Google Scholar; h-index 27) as of August 2015. Camp is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and an ACM Distinguished Lecturer. She shares her life with Max (born in 2000), Emma (born in 2003), her husband (Glen), and two cats. The four humans are vegetarians who tremendously enjoy living in the foothills of the Rockies.