Did you know that Santa Barbara played a pivotal role in the development of the internet?

In 1969, UC Santa Barbara was one of the very first nodes for ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, which was essentially the technical foundation of the Internet. Alongside major universities like Stanford and UCLA, UC Santa Barbara helped to create what would eventually become the modern-day internet. Our area has been at the heart of digital technology since its inception due to the work of computer scientists and engineers at UC Santa Barbara. Since then, UCSB has become a leader in computer science and engineering research, specializing in areas such as algorithms, artificial intelligence, distributed computing systems, big data — all of which are essential elements of our digital world today.