Unlocking Human Potential through Technical Innovation

Future innovations in computing technologies are just as likely to be driven by the outside demands for these technologies than by improvements driven from within the computer science community. In this regard, I define "computing" as the union of concerns including traditional computer science (such as systems, architecture, networking), human-computer interaction (HCI), graphics and animation, robotics, and theoretical foundations across the board. Alongside the formation of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech 15 years ago, the GVU Center for research was created to study, predict, and design future innovations in computing based on then unseen uses of computing technologies by enterprises not associated with computer science. Many research pundits at the time predicted that innovation would arise only from a technical agenda driven by rapid technology advances while people, evolutionarily speaking, would remain relatively unchanged. On the contrary, GVU's research agenda has evolved rapidly as people's capacity and desire for innovation has been almost without limits. In this article, I reflect on the evolving mission of this interdisciplinary research center, describing GVU's agenda going forward and how this agenda mirrors changes in the computing industry.