History
Milestones in the 50 years of Computing at the University of Waikato.
1970s
1973
The Department of Computer Science was founded.
1974
The first computing courses are offered.
1980s
1987
The School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences is founded: comprising the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics
1988
The first Computer Science PhD at Waikato was awarded to Venu Krishnamurthy: “Instruction Systolic Arrays for Exact Parallel Linear Algebraic Computation.”
1989
The first students graduate with a Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (BCMS).
1990s
1990
Official opening of G Block by Geoffrey Palmer, Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Computer Science, Mathematics and Computer Services were able to occupy the same building. Planning of R Block began, in order to house computer labs.
1993
R Block is opened by Simon Upton, Minister of Research, Science and Technology – with dedicated computer laboratory space.
We began teaching computer science in te reo Māori with 0657.113 Ngā Tautono Rorohiko. Later courses included 0657.124 He Tomokanga ki te Ao Rorohiko and 0657.234 He Puāwai ki te Ao Rorohiko.
1994
Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and indexing documents and images is published (Witten, Moffat and Bell).
1996
First release of the Weka software.
Waikato hosts the 6th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (OZCHI ‘96).
1997
First open source release of the Greenstone digital library software.
1999
Second edition of Managing Gigabytes (Witten, Moffat and Bell).
Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques with Java Implementations is published (Witten and Frank)
2000s
2001
The Māori Niupepa Collection is released using Greenstone: Niupepa is a digital collection of historic newspapers published primarily for a Māori audience between 1842 and 1932. Over 17,000 pages taken from 34 separate periodicals provide a rare and significant corpus of Māori language texts.
2002
Design joined the School of Computing Mathematical Sciences with the Bachelor of Computer Graphic Design (BCGD): a conjoint degree offered by the University of Waikato and The Wanganui School of Design.
2003
Māori artwork was commissioned to celebrate 30 years of Computer Science. The work was created by Reen Katipa, a kuia from Ngāti Raukawa and was titled Ngā Kete o te Wānanga. Displayed on the first floor of G Block it comprises four tukutuku panels and a kōwhaiwhai design.
The first students start the Software Engineering programme in the Bachelor of Engineering (Hons).
First edition of How to Build a Digital Library (Witten and Bainbridge).
2004
Ian Witten received the Namur Award for the development and application of the Greenstone digital library software system. The award was conferred by the International Federation of Information Processing Societies for
“outstanding contribution with international impact to the awareness of social implications of information technology”. Ian’s Award Lecture was titled Democratizing information: Digital libraries, developing countries, and information for all.
Waikato hosts the 6th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction (APCHI 2004) in Rotorua. Keynote talks by user experience experts Don Norman and Susan Drey.
2005
Ian Witten awarded the 2005 Hector Medal by the Royal Society Of New Zealand for “major contributions to many areas of computer science”.
The Weka team, led by Ian Witten and Eibe Frank, wins 2005 ACM SIGKDD Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Service Award: the “highest service award in the field of data mining and knowledge discovery”. The award notice stated that the “Weka team has made an outstanding contribution to the data mining field”.
Second edition of Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Witten and Frank).
The Department of Mathematics organizes the Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics conference (ANZIAM 2005) in Napier.
2009
The Software Engineering programme gains full accreditation from IPENZ (now Engineering New Zealand).
The University signs an agreement with the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic for completing Diploma in Applied Computing students to transfer to a BSc in Computer Science in Tauranga.
2010s
2010
Craig Nevill-Manning (PhD, 1996) receives the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University.
Second edition of How to Build a Digital Library (Witten, Bainbridge and Nichols).
Third edition of Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Witten, Frank and Hall).
20XX
ZUCC programme?
TGA programmes?
20XX
The first students start the new Masters of Cyber Security.
20XX
First students start the new Bachelor of Design.
2013
Landwehr, Hall and Frank won the Test of Time Award for Logistic Model Trees – published at the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD 2003).
The first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) from a New Zealand university is launched – Ian Witten presents Data Mining with Weka.
2014
Inaugural Cyber Security Challenge event.
2016
First cohort of students completes the new Master of Cyber Security.
The Master of Information Technology (MInfoTech) degree starts: a Master’s programme with a focus on engagement with industry. The degree includes student internships in local companies.
Fourth Edition of Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Witten, Frank, Hall and Pal).
CMS students (Hooker, Watson, Newton and Symon) win the Open Government Prize at GovHack New Zealand 2016: a competition to innovate with Government data.
Waikato hosts the 23rd Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2016).
2017
Te Taka Keegan wins the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Excellence in Tertiary Teaching (and the Award for sustained excellence in tertiary teaching – Kaupapa Māori category).
2018
The new Bachelor of Design is introduced. The degree currently has four majors: Interface Design, Industrial Design, Communication Design, and Media Design.
2019
Read, Pfahringer, Holmes and Frank won the Test of Time Award for Classifier Chains for Multi-label Classification – published at the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD 2009).
New Tauranga campus opens — students can enrol in the first year of the Software Engineering programme in the Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) degree.
2020s
2020
The first students start the new Bachelor of Computer Science (BCompSc).
The Computer Science programme in the BSc starts at the Tauranga campus.
2021
2023
First graduates in Tauranga from the BSc in Computer Science.
Do you know?
You can view all the Graduation Programmes, old copies of Nexus magazine, the University Art Collection and early photos of campus:
