School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

Last updated

University of Edinburgh School of Informatics
Informatics Forum University of Edinburgh.JPG
The Informatics Forum, home to the School of Informatics since 2008
Established1998 (1998)
Parent institution
 University of Edinburgh
Head of School Helen Hastie [1]
Academic staff
370 [2]
Administrative staff
96 [2]
Students1717 [3]
Undergraduates 1020 [3]
Postgraduates 697 [3]
Location
Edinburgh
,
Scotland
,
UK
Website www.ed.ac.uk/informatics
University of Edinburgh School of Informatics logo.jpg

The School of Informatics is an academic unit of the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, responsible for research, teaching, outreach and commercialisation in informatics. It was created in 1998 from the former department of artificial intelligence, the Centre for Cognitive Science and the department of computer science, along with the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) and the Human Communication Research Centre.[ citation needed ]

Contents

Research in the School of Informatics draws on multiple disciplines. The school is particularly known for research in the areas of artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, systems biology, mathematical logic and theoretical computer science; but also contributes to many other areas of informatics.

The School of Informatics is ranked 20th in the world by the QS World University Rankings 2023. As of 2022, the school is ranked 1st in the UK according to CSRankings, [4] 1st in the UK in the latest 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) by research power, [5] and 1st in the world for natural language processing (NLP). [6]

Research

Professor Malcolm Atkinson MalcolmPhilipAtkinson.jpg
Professor Malcolm Atkinson
Professor Philip Wadler Wadler2.JPG
Professor Philip Wadler
Professor Austin Tate Austin-Tate-2009-2400x2400.jpg
Professor Austin Tate
Professor Gordon Plotkin Gordon Plotkin.jpg
Professor Gordon Plotkin
Professor Wenfei Fan Wenfei Fan Royal Society.jpg
Professor Wenfei Fan
Professor Christopher Bishop Chris Bishop June 2015 Image 3 - SMALLER.jpg
Professor Christopher Bishop
Professor Alan Bundy Alan.Bundy.Image.jpg
Professor Alan Bundy
Professor Sethu Vijayakumar Sethu Vijayakumar.jpg
Professor Sethu Vijayakumar
Professor Peter Dayan was awarded the Rumelhart Prize in 2012 and The Brain Prize in 2017. He completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1991. Peter Dayan Royal Society.jpg
Professor Peter Dayan was awarded the Rumelhart Prize in 2012 and The Brain Prize in 2017. He completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1991.

The School of Informatics was awarded a 5*A [8] in the UK HEFCE's 2001 RAE, the only computer science department in the country to achieve this highest possible rating. [8] In the 2008 RAE, the School's "Quality Profile" was 35/50/15/0/0, which means that of the over 100 Full-time equivalent (FTE) staff research outputs evaluated, 35% were found "world-leading (4*)" and 50% "internationally excellent (3*)". [9] These figures can be interpreted in a number of ways, but place the School first by volume and tied for second (following Cambridge with 45/45/10/0/0) by percentage of research rated 3* or 4*. [10]

The School has a number of research Institutes:

Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation: ANC

ANC [11] investigates theoretical and empirical study of brain processes and artificial learning systems, drawing on neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, computational science, mathematics and statistics.

Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute: AIAI

Previously known as CISA (Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications), [12] the Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute (AIAI) [13] works on the foundations of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, and their application to real-world problems.

Institute for Language, Cognition, and Computation: ILCC

ILCC performs research on all aspects of natural language processing, drawing on machine learning, statistical modeling, and computational, psychological, and linguistic theories of communication among humans and between humans and machines using text, speech and other modalities. [14]

Institute for Computing Systems Architecture: ICSA

ICSA [15] performs research on architecture and engineering of future computing systems: performance and scalability; innovative algorithms, architectures, compilers, languages and protocols.

Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour: IPAB

IPAB [16] links computational action, perception, representation, transformation and generation processes to real or virtual worlds: statistical machine learning, computer vision, mobile and humanoid robotics, motor control, graphics and visualization.

Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science: LFCS

The LFCS [17] Develops and applies foundational understanding of computation and communication: formal models, mathematical theories, and software tools.

Senior academic staff and alumni

Current

Senior academic staff [18] include:

Former

Notable alumni

Alumni of the school of informatics include:

Accommodation

The 2002 Cowgate fire destroyed a number of buildings, [21] including 80 South Bridge, which housed around a quarter of the school and its renowned AI library. [22] By January 2003, space was made available in the University's Appleton Tower as a replacement. [23]

See also

Related Research Articles

The Max Planck Institute for Informatics is a research institute in computer science with a focus on algorithms and their applications in a broad sense. It hosts fundamental research as well a research for various application domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford</span> Department of the University of Oxford

The Department of Computer Science is the computer science department of the University of Oxford, England, which is part of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division. It was founded in 1957 as the Computing Laboratory. By 2014 the staff count was 52 members of academic staff and over 80 research staff. The 2019, 2020 and 2021 Times World University Subject Rankings places Oxford University 1st in the world for Computer Science. Oxford University is also the top university for computer science in the UK and Europe according to Business Insider. The 2020 QS University Subject Rankings places The University of Oxford 5th in the world for Computer Science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon Plotkin</span> Computer Scientist

Gordon David Plotkin is a theoretical computer scientist in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Plotkin is probably best known for his introduction of structural operational semantics (SOS) and his work on denotational semantics. In particular, his notes on A Structural Approach to Operational Semantics were very influential. He has contributed to many other areas of computer science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Wadler</span> American computer scientist

Philip Lee Wadler is a UK-based American computer scientist known for his contributions to programming language design and type theory. He is holds the position of Personal Chair of theoretical computer science at the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. He has contributed to the theory behind functional programming and the use of monads; and the designs of the purely functional language Haskell and the XQuery declarative query language. In 1984, he created the Orwell language. Wadler was involved in adding generic types to Java 5.0. He is also author of "Theorems for free!", a paper that gave rise to much research on functional language optimization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Boden</span> Researcher in the field of artificial intelligence

Margaret Ann Boden is a Research Professor of Cognitive Science in the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraces the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Appleton Tower</span> University tower block in Edinburgh, Scotland

Appleton Tower is a tower block in Edinburgh, Scotland, owned by the University of Edinburgh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Bundy</span> British artificial intelligence researcher (born 1947)

Alan Richard Bundy is a professor at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, known for his contributions to automated reasoning, especially to proof planning, the use of meta-level reasoning to guide proof search.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Austin Tate</span>

Austin Tate is Emeritus Professor of Knowledge-based systems in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. From 1985 to 2019 he was Director of AIAI in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.

Computational logic is the use of logic to perform or reason about computation. It bears a similar relationship to computer science and engineering as mathematical logic bears to mathematics and as philosophical logic bears to philosophy. It is an alternative term for "logic in computer science".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Informatics Forum</span>

The Informatics Forum is a major building on the Central Area campus of the University of Edinburgh. Completed in 2008, it houses the research institutes of the university's School of Informatics.

Johanna Doris Moore is a computational linguist and cognitive scientist. Her research publications include contributions to natural language generation, spoken dialogue systems, computational models of discourse, intelligent tutoring and training systems, human-computer interaction, user modeling, and knowledge representation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute</span> Artificial Intelligence research

The Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh was a non-profit technology transfer organisation that promoted research in the field of artificial intelligence.

Igor I. Goryanin is a systems biologist, who holds a Henrik Kacser Chair in Computational Systems Biology at the University of Edinburgh. He also heads the Biological Systems Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel Shadbolt</span> Principal of Jesus College, Oxford

Sir Nigel Richard Shadbolt and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. He is chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Tim Berners-Lee. He is also a visiting professor in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Shadbolt is an interdisciplinary researcher, policy expert and commentator. His research focuses on understanding how intelligent behaviour is embodied and emerges in humans, machines and, most recently, on the Web, and has made contributions to the fields of psychology, cognitive science, computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, computer science and the emerging field of web science.

Informatics is the study of computational systems. According to the ACM Europe Council and Informatics Europe, informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which the central notion is transformation of information. In some cases, the term "informatics" may also be used with different meanings, e.g. in the context of social computing, or in context of library science.

The College of Science and Engineering is one of the three colleges of the University of Edinburgh. With over 2,000 staff and around 9,000 students, it is one of the largest science and engineering groupings in the UK. The college is largely located at the King's Buildings campus and consists of the separate schools of:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sethu Vijayakumar</span>

Sethu Vijayakumar is Professor of Robotics at the University of Edinburgh and a judge on the BBC2 show Robot Wars. He is the Programme co-Director for Artificial Intelligence at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's National Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, with the responsibility for defining and driving the institute's Robotics and Autonomous Systems agenda. He co-founded the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics in 2015 and was instrumental in bringing the first NASA Valkyrie humanoid robot out of the United States of America, and to Europe, where is it a focus of research at the School of Informatics. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elham Kashefi</span> Computer scientist and quantum computing researcher

Elham Kashefi is a Professor of Computer Science and Personal Chair in quantum computing at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, and a Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) researcher at the Sorbonne University. She is known as one of the inventors of blind quantum computing. Her work has included contributions to quantum cryptography, verification of quantum computing, and cloud quantum computing.

Bonnie Lynn Nash-Webber is a computational linguist. She is an honorary professor of intelligent systems in the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC) at the University of Edinburgh.

Fiona McNeill is a Reader in Computer Science Education at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. She is co-chair of the British Computer Society's Scottish Computing Education Committee and represents the BCS in the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Learned Societies’ Group.

References

  1. ↑ "Contact us". University of Edinburgh School of Informatics. 11 September 2018. Retrieved 11 September 2018.
  2. 1 2 "Staff Headcount & Full Time Equivalent Statistics (FTE) as at Oct 17". Human Resources, The University of Edinburgh. October 2018. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 "University of Edinburgh Factsheet 2017/2018" (PDF). Governance & Strategic Planning, The University of Edinburgh. 31 January 2018. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  4. ↑ Berger, Emery D. (2020). "CSRankings".
  5. ↑ "Research rankings confirm Edinburgh as world leader". The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 15 May 2022.
  6. ↑ Berger, Emery D. (2020). "CSRankings".
  7. ↑ Dayan, Peter Samuel (1991). Reinforcing connectionism: learning the statistical way. lib.ed.ac.uk (PhD thesis). hdl:1842/14754. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.649240. Lock-green.svg
  8. 1 2 "RAE 2001 : Results". rae.ac.uk.
  9. ↑ "RAE 2008 : Quality profiles". rae.ac.uk.
  10. ↑ "Informatics News: RAE 2008 results: Informatics and Computer Science".
  11. ↑ "Welcome — ANC - Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation". www.anc.ed.ac.uk.
  12. ↑ "CISA is changing its name | InfWeb". web.inf.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  13. ↑ "AIAI - InfWeb". web.inf.ed.ac.uk.
  14. ↑ "ILCC - InfWeb". web.inf.ed.ac.uk.
  15. ↑ "ICSA - InfWeb". web.inf.ed.ac.uk.
  16. ↑ "IPAB - InfWeb". web.inf.ed.ac.uk.
  17. ↑ "Welcome to LFCS — LFCS". wcms.inf.ed.ac.uk.
  18. ↑ "People". The University of Edinburgh.
  19. ↑ Hinton, Geoffrey Everest (1977). Relaxation and its role in vision. lib.ed.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/8121. OCLC   18656113. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.482889. Lock-green.svg
  20. ↑ Anon (2014). "Shadbolt, Prof. Nigel Richard" . Who's Who (online edition via Oxford University Press  ed.). A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U245873.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  21. ↑ Seenan, Gerard (9 December 2002). "Fire devastates Edinburgh's Old Town". the Guardian. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  22. ↑ agencies, Staff and (9 December 2002). "Edinburgh AI archive lost in fire". the Guardian. Retrieved 30 March 2021.
  23. ↑ Fourman, Michael Paul. "Emergency Arrangements". www.inf.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 30 March 2021.

55°56′40″N3°11′14″W / 55.94444°N 3.18722°W / 55.94444; -3.18722

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.