Computational biologist blogger saves computer science department

People who read the news should be aware by now that we are in the midst of a big data era. The New York Times, for example, has been writing about this frequently. One of their most recent articles describes how UC Berkeley is getting $60 million dollars for a new computer science center. Meanwhile, at University of Florida the administration seems to be oblivious to all this and about a month ago announced it was dropping its computer science department to save $. Blogger Steven Salzberg, a computational biologists known for his work in genomics, wrote a post titled “University of Florida eliminates Computer Science Department. At least they still have football” ridiculing UF for their decisions. Here are my favorite quotes:

 in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely? 

Computer scientist Carl de Boor, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and winner of the 2003 National Medal of Science, asked the UF president “What were you thinking?”

Well, his post went viral and days later UF reversed it’s decision! So my point is this: statistics departments, be nice to bloggers that work in genomics… one of them might save your butt some day.

Disclaimer: Steven Salzberg has a joint appointment in my department and we have joint lab meetings.