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On Campus
A LAB FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Welcome to the Future of Information
Science
By David F. Salisbury
 TEP THROUGH
THE DOORS OF THE NEW Gates Computer Science Building - into a
laboratory of 21st-century technology. On the first floor, a pair of
6-foot robots busily
wash windows, dust furniture and shelve books in the
Robotics Lab. Upstairs in the Computer Graphics Lab, researchers wear
special eyeglasses to reveal a “virtual” skeleton floating above a
workbench, her
organs visible beneath translucent skin.
Nearby, a brilliant ruby-red laser light silently traces the surface of a small
plastic Buddha - the first step in faxing a three-dimensional image across the
country.
Welcome to the future of information science.
With the help of a gift from Microsoft Corp. founder William Gates in
1992,
Stanford has constructed the $38.4 million Gates Computer Science Building to
house the far-flung programs of the computer science department under one roof.
The high-tech building brings together faculty who previously had pursued their
work in computer graphics, computer architecture, database management, robotics,
artificial intelligence and related fields in eight different campus locations.
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