Computer Science Pathways

I am a new student, having just started at a university after transferring from a community college. I am really interested in computer science. My community college had a few IT tracks, but I want to move into something more advanced for my major. The thing is, it’s a huge university and there are a ton of options for classes, paths, and directions to take. I’m a little unsure of which I should choose. What are some different pathways I can take with a computer science degree?

 Computer science is a huge and ever-growing field, with hundreds of specialties to choose from. The complexity of computer science means that it is difficult to become a jack-of-all-trades. Network security is different from data science. Software engineers and bioinformatics specialists do not normally hang out. While mastering the basics of one field can help you learn about the others, you can spend your entire degree program learning those basics. For this reason, when you are considering a computer science major, it helps to know the lay of the land. Here are four major fields in computer science to spell it out for you.

Cybersecurity

Just like its name suggests, cybersecurity is the practice of defending programs and networks from hacks and digital attacks. Cybersecurity experts develop systems to defend computers and servers from external attacks, and put systems in place to ensure that people who have to access sensitive information have the correct credentials to do so. Because of the importance of digital networks to the contemporary world, cybersecurity has become a target of significant corporate and governmental investment. According to Kaspersky labs, the US government spends $19 billion per year on cybersecurity. If you are interested in cybersecurity, look for classes on cryptography, network security, and network theory.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is one of the most exciting fields in computer science, as computer scientists develop ever-more-powerful AI to perform ever-more-diverse tasks. At its most basic level, artificial intelligence is the practice of teaching computers to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as driving, recognizing pictures, or translation. Every time you use a search engine to translate a passage from one language to another, or every time you read something about a self-driving car, you are seeing artificial intelligence at work, in the real world. Studying natural language processing, machine learning, and data science can help you master the basics of artificial intelligence.

Mobile and internet computing

Thanks to advances to our phones, we can now access data and information from anywhere on earth. Mobile and internet computing is the domain of computer science that is responsible for designing and building this infrastructure. The field also encompasses internet practices such as search and SEO, or the complex act of determining which information online is relevant to a given query. Search engines manage website relevance through a complex analysis of website metadata, backlinks, germane content, and local SEO, all of which is sorted by algorithm. Companies like LinkGraph work with businesses of all sizes to ensure their content is prepared for this heavy analysis to ensure they rank higher in search results. If this sounds exciting, you may want to look into classes that focus on computer languages for web applications, as well as user experience design. 

 Biocomputation

Biocomputation is a hybrid field which investigates computational solutions to medical and biological problems. Biology is chockablock with devilishly complex processes, and medical professionals have found that high-performance computers have the ability to simulate biological experiments that would be too complex  — or too expensive — to run in a lab. Computer scientists involved in biocomputation may study the ways amino acids fold into proteins, or the expression of various genes. Some areas of study in biocomputation include computational genomics and bioengineering.

All in all, there are many fields within the computer science realm. Choosing a speciality should ultimately come down to your interests, your passions, and where you see yourself working after graduation.

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