Robert H. (Bob) Sloan

Professor and Department Head

Contact

Robert Sloan
Dept. of Computer Science (M/C 152)
University of Illinois at Chicago
851 S. Morgan Street (Room 1120)
Chicago, IL 60607-7053
Phone: 312-996-2369
Email: my-last-name at host: uic.edu.

What's Important to Me

New Summer of 2019 book! Why Don't We Defend Better?: Data Breaches, Risk Management, and Public Policy, by Robert H. Sloan and Richard Warner, CRC Press, 2019.
I am a proud BRAID Department Head.
You should study Computer Science, and I'm writing about it. Download and read Robert H. Sloan, "Why Computer Science?" (in a collection, written just before enrollments went from high to extraordinarily high).
Richard Warner's and my earlier book: Unauthorized Access: The Crisis in Online Privacy and Security, by Robert H. Sloan and Richard Warner, CRC Press, 2013.
Now under contract: A book for Cambridge University Press, due out late 2020 or early 2019.

Teaching (and CS Education)

Falll 2019 Teaching

CS 111 "Law" again, a special law and public policy-themed section team-taught with Prof. Richard Warner, IIT Chicago-Kent Law School. (Website coming by August 26, probably a little earlier.)

Selected Past Courses Taught

Fall 2018, CS 111 "Law" Program Design I (link may update to current version of course when we next teach it), a special law and public policy-themed section team-taught with Prof. Richard Warner, IIT Chicago-Kent Law School.
Fall 2017, CS 111 "Green", Program Design I, a special biology-themed section team-taught by Prof. Rachel Poretsky of Biological Sciences and myself
Spring 2017, CS 477, Public Policy, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing, Privacy, and Security, jointly led by myself and Prof. Richard Warner, IIT Chicago-Kent Law School, for a mixed group of law school students and UIC CS (and other!) students.
Fall 2016, CS 111, Program Design I, a special law-themed section team-taught with Prof. Richard Warner, IIT Chicago-Kent Law School.
Fall 2015, CS 377, Communication and Ethical Issues in Computing.
Spring 2015, CS 477, Public Policy, Legal, and Ethical Issues in Computing, Privacy, and Security, jointly led by myself and Prof. Richard Warner, IIT Chicago-Kent Law School, for a mixed group of law school students and UIC CS (and other!) students.
Fall 2013, CS 377, Communication and Ethical Issues in Computing. Team taught with Prof. Dale Reed. First-ever offering of this new required course.
Spring 2013, CS 491, Computing Law, Policy, & Ethics, jointly led by myself and Prof. Richard Warner, Kent IIT Law School, for a mixed group of law school students and UIC CS (and other!) grad students.
CS 301, Languages and Automata. (Link has probably been overwritten by some subsequent offering of CS 301 that uses the department's wiki.)
Spring 2011, CS 335, Computer Ethics. (Link current as of December 2011, but might be overwritten by some subsequent offering of CS 335 that uses the department's wiki.)
Spring 2010, Special Topics 400-level course: CS 491, Computer and Network Privacy and Security: Ethical, Legal, and Technical Considerations, jointly led by myself and Prof. Richard Warner, Kent IIT Law School, for a mixed group of law school students and CS grad students.
Spring 2009: Computer Science 301, Languages and Automata
Spring 2008 version of privacy/security special topics: CS 594: Computer and Network Privacy and Security: Ethical, Legal and Technical Considerations.
Other Selected past classes

Computer Science Education: Model curricula, etc.

I was a coauthor of (i.e., member of the relevant joint ACM and IEEE-Computer Society task force for):

Computing Curricula 2001: Computer Science.
Computing Curricula 2004: Computer Engineering.
Computing Curricula 2005: The Overview Report.
CS2008 Curriculum Update. (2008 light revision of Computing Curricula 2001: Computer Science)

All those reports are available here.

Research

Research interests:

Computer security, especially privacy, legal, and policy issues.
Application of computer science theory and algorithms to problems from artificial intelligence. Proud member of the UIC theory group. Currently especially focused on problems from knowledge representation. Previously especially focused on problems from machine learning ("computational learning theory").
Computer Science Education.