"Coinciding with biotech center, UB to offer informatics degree"

With the growth of the information economy, informatics has become its own field of study as universities and businesses begin to embrace the need for managing and handling huge amounts of data.

In response to industry demand, UB's School of Informatics has announced it will offer a bachelor's degree in informatics, beginning in fall 2006, to provide undergraduates with training in both information technology and interpersonal skills.

Informatics is defined as the intersection of people, information and technologies. According to Logan Scott, director of the undergraduate informatics program, the program primarily focuses on organization and communication skills. Throughout the course, students will not only learn how to use software applications for this purpose, but they will also learn how to conceptualize the information, focusing on the understanding of humans' interactions with computers.

"The aim is not for students to learn any particular software application, but rather learn how to conceptualize the presentation, storage and gathering of information," Scott said. "A task which involves, among other things, understanding how to separate content from style and layout, understanding how humans interact with computer or Web interfaces and understanding how the processes of design and user research can be combined in the application development process."

Informatics is commonly confused with bioinformatics, but according to Barbara Mulvenna, associate director for external relations for the School of Informatics, they're two very different concepts.

"Bioinformatics could be called a subset of informatics. At UB it's more computational biology, crunching numbers and huge amounts of data," she said. "We don't do that. We do social informatics, communication structures."

Mulvenna added, "We're interested in the intersection of people, information and technology."

And this intersection will be the focus of the courses required for the informatics degree.

"From my perspective, informatics courses have to combine concepts relating to technology, information and people or social context. Our interest in technology is always within a human, organizational or individual, context," Scott said. "On the other hand, we have courses in which technology is not emphasized, such as courses which relate to organizational or interpersonal communication."

All of the courses are balanced in such way that it offers the students a variety of choices in fields. Currently the degree consists of three main aspects: research (evaluation and interactive design), programming (Web and database) and information (visualization).

Students have already expressed an interested in enrolling in the new degree program.

"I am a computer engineering major and will officially change my major when (the informatics major) is available," said freshman Michael John.

Vivek Rajendran, a freshman electrical engineering and mathematics major, said he's excited that UB has chosen to offer this type of degree.

"Information technology is a growing and frequently changing field, and the study of informatics provides students with the technical as well as communication skills to solve problems, analyze situations and be adaptable," Rajendran said. "After finding (out) more about this major, I realized I'd like to go for it, as it was perfectly what I was looking for in terms of studying computers and information technology."

The program will offer more choices once it has been given a test drive and is evaluated.

"We are hoping to start from 200 students and if the ideas about the future are true, the program will grow even more," Scott said. "I would like to say that we are ahead of the game because the undergraduate degree will help the students by preparing them for their future career and also for graduate school."

In order to get accepted into the program, students must take three prerequisite courses -- Introduction to Informatics and Programming for the Web I, both within the informatics department, and Introduction to the Internet from the communication department -- and earn a combined GPA of 2.75 or higher in those courses.

What is informatics?
The School of Informatics tagline: "Where people, information and technology meet." What does that mean?

• Informatics work to make working with information more intuitive for the people who need to access it
  
• In business, it can be applied to searching records of customers, bills and products, making it easier for both business and customer get the information they need faster and more accurately.
  
• It can also be used in what School of Informatics officials called the Oknowledge base,O making it easier for more experienced workers can share their knowledge with newer ones.
  
• Applications include libraries, hospitals, research, schools and anywhere information is shared.