Microsoft’s Craig Mundie has some big shoes to fill when Bill Gates steps down next year–or at least one shoe anyway.

Gates tapped Mundie, the software giant’s chief research and strategy officer, and chief software architect Ray Ozzie to replace him and handle the day-to-day operation of the company so he can focus on his charitable foundation.

In a recent speech at Georgia Tech’s New Faces in Technology Symposium, Mundie told the audience that computer science has had a profound impact on productivity and creativity, but said it was still a relatively young discipline.