CSE 4510-E6: A Survey of Interdisciplinary CS
("CS in Action")

This course provides a survey of how CS can help solve problems in other disciplines, such as Biology and Sociology. For each discipline, we first discuss a sample problem(s) and the associated background knowledge to understand the problem(s). We then discuss possible algorithmic solutions and compare them. Faculty members from other disciplines might be invited to help discuss the problems and associated background knowledge.

Homework assignments include implementation and comparison of the algorithms. For the term project, students design and analyze solutions to a problem(s) in a discipline other than CS.

The target audience is mostly sophomores and juniors who have passed Data Structures (CSE 2010) ["C" or above] and have not started Senior Projects (so that they can potentially minor in other discipline and/or pursue interdisciplinary Senior Projects after this course). However, seniors are not excluded.

Sample Disciplines and Problems

• Astronomy: sharpening telescope images
• Biology: DNA sequencing/matching, phylogeny, splice junctions, protein secondary structures
• Business: credit card approval, fraud detection
• Chemistry: visualizing 3D molecular structure, identifying common substructures
• Civil Engineering: traffic control
• Environmental science: identifying changes in vegetation over time
• Finance: trading, mortgage-pool allocation (securitization)
• Geography: maps (driving directions, GPS)
• Marketing: recommendation (netflix, amazon), targeted advertisment
• Medicine: automated diagnosis
• Physics: muon tomography
• Psychology: identify the profile of child abusers
• Political Science: electronic voting, public initiatives
• Public health: epidemiology (modeling epidemics)
• Sociology: six degrees of separation (movie actors, Obama and me), communities, "tipping points"

Evaluation

• Homework Assignments and Term Project (50%)
• Midterm exam (20%)
• Final exam (30%)

Prerequisite

• CSE 2010 Algorithms and Data Structures ["C" or above]