Pioneers & Founders
This 19th-century mathematician is widely regarded as the first computer programmer for her work on the Analytical Engine
Ada Lovelace
Proposed in 1950, this is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.
Turing Test
This two-word phrase is traditionally the first output of a beginner's program.
Hello World
This type of memory is volatile and stores data that the computer is currently using.
RAM
While they are now connected as one complex, these two structures were built 20 years apart. Between the Sitterson Hall main building and the Fred Brooks wing, which one was open for students first?
Sitterson
He led the team that cracked the Enigma code and later proposed a famous "test" for AI.
Alan Turing
This is the name of the new UNC school, founded in 2022, that bridges Computer Science with social science and data ethics.
School of Data Science and Society (SDSS)
This numbering system uses only 0s and 1s to represent data.
Binary
This "law" predicted that the number of transistors on a microchip would double approximately every two years.
Moore's Law
UNC PhD alumna Kelly Ward was hired by Disney to create the physics-based modeling for this character’s 70 feet of golden hair.
Rapunzel
His 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" founded the field of Information Theory.
Claude Shannon
In the famous AI tool "ChatGPT," the letters GPT stand for this three-word phrase.
Generative Pre-trained Transformer
This notation is used in CS to describe the performance or complexity of an algorithm.
Big O Notation
This computer architecture describes a design with a single storage structure for both instructions and data.
Von Neumann Architecture
Before the current computer science building, the department was largely housed in this building, which still stands near the Old Well.
Phillips Hall
This U.S. Navy Rear Admiral developed the first compiler and popularized the term "debugging."
Grace Hopper
This term describes the "hidden" nature of modern AI models, where it is difficult for humans to see exactly how a specific decision was made.
Black Box Problem
This is the most famous unsolved problem in CS, asking if every problem whose solution can be quickly verified can also be quickly solved.
P vs NP
Also known as Brewer's Theorem, it states a distributed data store cannot simultaneously provide consistency, availability, and partition tolerance.
CAP Theorem
In 1999, Brooks received this "Nobel Prize of Computing" for his contributions to computer architecture and software engineering.
Turing Award