Ian Gorton named Director of Computer Science, Northeastern, Seattle
Meeting the Puget Sound’s demand for high quality Computer Science Employees – Northeastern Names Dr. Ian Gorton as the Director of Computer Science at their Seattle Graduate Campus
The Greater Seattle region in 2015 has enjoyed the reputation of being the global leader in Big Data and Cloud Computing, with companies like Amazon and Microsoft leading the way. Other homegrown Seattle companies are becoming global leaders in others areas, such as f5 (application delivery networking technology) and Tableau Software (interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence). The technical talent and innovation found in Seattle has, in recent years, attracted other global tech leaders, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, to set up shop here. The Seattle region is fortunate to have hundreds of other successful technology companies, all of whom require a steady pipeline of talent to meet the ever-changing technology demands of their companies. The hunger in this region for “Coding Ninjas” is reflected in the Infographic below, which was produced by the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA).
All of the higher education institutions in Washington State with computer science undergraduate and graduate degree programs create far fewer graduates than are needed by technology companies in the state. Northeastern University decided to build its Seattle Graduate campus in 2012 to help fill the tremendous gap in STEM areas, especially computer science. Our College of Computer and Information Science has hired industry experts from Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Twitter, to enhance its graduate MS in Computer Science offered in Seattle by teaching courses in the degree program and advising our students on recent developments in industry. As a result, our computer science degree program is one of our most popular.
To continue the high quality and growth of this program at our Seattle Campus, Northeastern named this week Dr. Ian Gorton as the Director of Computer Science at its Seattle Graduate campus, effective June 1, 2015. Dr. Gorton comes to Northeastern with 25 years of experience working in the software industry, academia, and government labs, both in the United States and Australia. He currently serves as a senior member of the Technical Staff with the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to Carnegie he worked as a lab fellow at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. His research at both organizations focused on software architectures and technologies for scalable, big data systems in various scientific, engineering, and health-related domains. Click here to learn more about Dr. Gorton.
I am very excited to work with Dr. Gorton in establishing a world-class computer science program that can forge synergies between education, practice and research. With his help we will continue to attract top-notch Seattle faculty and students to Northeastern.