When Mike Franklin was being recruited to leave the University of California at Berkeley to head up the computer science department at the University of Chicago, it wasn't exactly love at first sight. As he got a tour of the department's proposed new home—the John Crerar Library, a onetime repository for scientific journals—Franklin considered the squat, dark, industrial-grade box and said, " 'There's not enough light.' They said, 'We can change that,' " he recalls. "I said, 'Hmm, maybe this could work.'"

And so workers cut big holes in the concrete walls for new windows, and today the space looks and feels more like a tech startup than a university. Opened in September, it's the most visible part of U of C's makeover of computer science that brought Franklin to Hyde Park two years ago. Windows may not seem like a big deal. But the renovation was a clear indication of just how serious U of C was about upgrading the program, and why Franklin was willing to leave Berkeley.

"It was a huge coup for (U of C President) Bob Zimmer to recruit him," says Tom Siebel, founder of legendary Silicon Valley database-software maker Siebel Systems, who endowed a professorship at Berkeley held by Franklin, as well as similar positions at the University of Illinois (Siebel's alma mater), Stanford and Princeton. "He's a giant who's universally respected, one of the innovators in Big Data. His academic credentials are second to none."

Franklin, who was head of Berkeley's top-ranked computer science division, is a leading researcher in cloud computing and data analytics who pioneered ways to do real-time analysis of massive data sets. Leaving the San Francisco Bay Area and Berkeley for Hyde Park and a less-prestigious program seemed like a long shot. Berkeley is in the cradle of the tech industry, where Franklin could collaborate with its biggest companies on research projects such as AMPLab, which resulted in Spark, an open-source software that has become the standard for working with and analyzing huge amounts of data. It's also a creative hotbed where students and faculty easily start companies, which Franklin also did, building Truviso, a networking software startup that was sold to Cisco Systems in 2012.

But the 57-year-old is a builder. Changes in academic programs, especially the top 20, can be measured in decades. U of C, ranked No. 30 in computer science and 15th in CS theory in 2018, according to U.S. News & World Report, had a strong enough foundation upon which to build a top-ranked computer science program.

"You can't build a top program, starting from scratch," Franklin says. "I was convinced the administration was 100 percent committed to building out a top-tier computer science department. It's an opportunity to step on the gas."

It helped that U of C raised more than $20 million from alumni donors for computer science as part of a long-term commitment of at least $100 million. The school is trying to transition from a place known for theory to creating technology, with an emphasis on data science, Franklin's specialty.

"We traditionally had a small computer science department that grew out of mathematics," says Edward "Rocky" Kolb, former dean of U of C's physical sciences division, who hired Franklin. "We want to be a national player and to be innovative. If we build a great department, the rankings will follow. Chicago isn't MIT or Berkeley: It will always be smaller. But we can build on the strengths of the university to have an impact in CS."

Franklin's hiring didn't go unnoticed—on or off campus. "People ask me about Mike and what's happening in CS," says Charlie Catlett, a researcher at U of C for nearly 20 years.

"The moment you attract someone like Mike, UIUC and Northwestern say, 'We need to compete,' " adds Andreas Cangellaris, provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was dean of engineering. "We also have someone we can collaborate with. There's a sense of excitement. I'm ecstatic to have him in the Midwest."

The real test long term is whether U of C improves in rankings and research grants. It historically has been seen as having a disadvantage in computer science because it doesn't have an engineering school, as U of I or Northwestern do. But data science is heavily rooted in math and statistics. "I think it's possible to have a top CS program today without having a traditional engineering program," Kolb says.

U of C also is responding to market demand, which is skyrocketing for computer science. Enrollment has at least doubled nationally and at U of C, Northwestern and the University of Illinois at Chicago in the past five years or so.

U of C joins Northwestern in an arms race in which both have built new facilities and are aggressively hiring faculty. "In academia, to grow a department, you add an appointment every decade," Kolb says. "Hiring in CS is difficult. We're not the only university who realizes the need. All of our peers are trying to build computer science. (Mike's) stature, vision and personality is a great tool in recruiting."

Franklin is halfway to nearly doubling faculty, adding 13 members, pushing the total to 35. His recruits have come from some of the nation's top schools, including Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon. Pedro Lopes, 32, who recently earned a doctorate from Hasso Plattner Institute in Berlin, says he chose U of C over some top 10 programs.

"I had a lot of choices. A lot of it has to do with Mike and the place and time where the department is," says Lopes, whose specialty is human-computer interaction, with an interest in wearable devices. "(U of C) was smaller and mostly dedicated to what computer science used to be . . . the theory. The version you see now is what CS is today, AI, human-computer interaction. I wanted to design how new students are going to see the field."

Franklin realizes the irony of a program trying to transition from theory to practical applications doing so from a building that recently housed stacks of printed scientific journals that have moved online. But on a tour, he points out new lab spaces where there are prototypes strewn about. In one, Ben Zhao, a professor who specializes in data mining and security, shows off a bracelet-like device he made with help from Lopes to thwart an automated assistant such as Alexa or Google Assistant. It's exactly the kind of collaboration for which Franklin became known at Berkeley's AMPLab (algorithms, machines and people), in large part, by putting faculty and students side by side.

But Franklin has a lot of space to fill yet at Crerar, so it still feels a little empty. Students from elsewhere on campus have seized on the common areas, formerly home to the library's stacks, as quiet study space. Some things in Hyde Park never change. "So our people are trying to be quiet, not wanting to disturb them. I want it to be a little louder in here," says Franklin, who has an easygoing nature and an irreverent streak to go along with his academic cred. Spark became the basis for Big Data software called the Berkeley data-analytics stack, which he and his fellow researchers dubbed BDAS and pronounced "bad ass." "This is about energy and collaboration."

He'll need both to get U of C where it wants to be.