Oral history interview with Daniel (Dan) Boley

Abstract

This interview was conducted by CBI for CS&E, a multi-year project extending from the 50th Anniversary of the University of Minnesota Computer Science Department (now Computer Science and Engineering, CS&E). The oral history begins with Boley’s early interests, undergraduate work at Cornell, and completing a doctorate at Stanford University. It explores the Computer Science Department environment in the 1980s, its administration, Boley’s teaching, and research in various areas of numerical analysis, data science, and machine learning. This includes his work, often allowing graduate students to follow their interests, in applications such as health/medicine, navigation, etc. He discusses this work with Vipin Kumar, collaborations across departments in the College of Science and Engineering, and with other colleges such as the College of Liberal Arts, and the discussions and debates, and launch of the immediately popular and fast-growing Data Science Program.