Grads

Elaine Chang has a passion for learning, growing from different experiences to another, and she’s equally excited about sharing what she knows with others. These traits make her uniquely suited to her work as a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, where she combines her love of technology with business applications to help create cutting-edge software products. Wearing multiple hats in this role, Elaine works with diverse groups, displaying a great deal of flexibility and willingness to adapt.

Andy Warfield

UBC Assistant Professor of Computer Science Andy Warfield has won awards that range from the UBC Terrific TA Award to an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Studentship, a Cambridge Commonwealth Scholarship, and most recently, the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship. He laughs outright, though, at the suggestion that somehow he was destined from a young age to academic greatness. “Oh no, I was pretty disorganized as a high school student. When I applied to colleges it was under a kind of ‘total chance and random decision’ method.‘”

Dave Burke

A hugely popular form of entertainment, video gaming is currently a nearly $50 billion worldwide industry that experts predict will overtake the music industry in sales by the end of 2011. This is true in no small part because gaming, contrary to popular belief, is something we all seem to do.

Paul Kry

In reading through Paul Kry’s CV of research, teaching, and professional accomplishments, one has the sense of being in the presence of a person absolutely born to academics. But despite his long-standing interests in computing and computer science, Paul laughs at the suggestion that it was a foregone conclusion that, for example, once he’d finished his masters in CS, he’d continue for a Ph.D. “No, no!” he says with an easy laugh. “I knew I was interested and that I wanted to learn more, but you never really know where these things are going to lead.”

Heidi Lam

Heidi Lam, who holds two degrees from UBC and two from Simon Fraser, has an impressive string of academic credentials, but she laughs off any suggestion that she’s a super-achiever. Instead, she suggests with quiet, yet focused, determination that she’s been seeking the best way to develop her intellectual interests while being true to her personality: a functional way to balance what she wants with who she is. For Heidi, a software engineer at Google, this search to date has yielded impressive results.

Hendrik Kueck

The display of an iPhone measures just 3.5 inches diagonally, yet as millions of iPhone fans will attest, it’s a portal into a vast world of apps, some 350,000 and counting at present. For the developers of those apps, it’s the space and place where inventiveness and savvy come together. For Hendrik Kueck, founder of Pocket Pixels of Vancouver, BC, the iPhone display represents the intersection of his passion for aesthetics and his intellectual interest in problem-solving, mapped to his desire to merge the two in fun and functional apps for consumers.

How can I get involved outside the classroom?

The department has many ways for students to engage outside the classroom.

Volunteer opportunities:

Most committees have at least one undergraduate and graduate student representative.
You may become an executive member of the Computer Science Students Society (CSSS).
You can become a mentor or a mentee through the Tri-Mentoring Program.
Girlsmart workshops for Grade 6 girls and the TechTrek workshops for grade 8-12 high school students.

The department is always eager to meet students who are willing to share their knowledge with high school students, especially if you are a good public speaker and enjoy speaking in front of groups.

The Department is always in need of volunteers to help with outreach events. For more information on getting involved with the department, please contact Michele Ng at mng@cs.ubc.ca or 604-822-5693, or Giuliana Villegas at villegas@cs.ubc.ca or 604-822-2213.

Paid opportunities

You take a semester to go on a Co-op work term with a company.
You can help other students by being a paid Teaching Assistant - See Student Careers for job postings.
You can apply to do work as a paid Research Assistant - See Student Careers for job postings.

What is the difference between research faculty and instructors?

Research professors pursue their research interests in addition to teaching, while instructors teach, develop curriculum, and administer our undergraduate program.

What is notable about UBC Computer Science research?

Our internationally-renowned professors lead a department that is distinguished by a focus on interdisciplinary research, making it a top department in Canada and in the world. For more information on the department's many research activities, see www.cs.ubc.ca/cs-research.

Dr. Sohrab Shah

A focus on finding a direct route to a meaningful outcome seems a distinctive characteristic of Sohrab Shah’s life and work to date. As an undergrad in biology at Queen’s University, he had little knowledge of computers, but he figured out how to use them anyway to develop multi-media tutorials “functioning as souped-up lab manuals,” he notes, to help other students have a better understanding of biological diversity. After graduating from Queens in 1996 he became interested in web design.

Subscribe to Grads