School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
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 and the Human Communication Research Centre.
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 was ranked 15th in the World in the latest 2014 Research Excellence Framework, successor to Research Assessment Exercise, ranking. The School of Informatics was ranked 12th in the world by the QS World University Rankings 2014.
Research
The School of Informatics was awarded a 5*A in the UK HEFCE's 2001 RAE, the only computer science department in the country to achieve this highest possible rating. 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 staff research outputs evaluated, 35% were found "world-leading " and 50% "internationally excellent ". These figures can be interpreted in a number of ways, but place the School first by volume and tied for second by percentage of research rated 3* or 4*. The School is generally considered world-leading, standing with the foremost U.S. institutes, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine translation, and theoretical computer science.The School has a number of research Institutes:
Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation: ANC
ANC 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, the Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute 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.Institute for Computing Systems Architecture: ICSA
ICSA 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 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 Develops and applies foundational understanding of computation and communication: formal models, mathematical theories, and software tools.Senior academic staff and alumni
Senior academic staff include:- Professor Malcolm Atkinson
- Professor Alan Bundy
- Professor Peter Buneman
- Professor Christopher Bishop
- Professor Wenfei Fan
- Professor Michael Fourman
- Professor Igor Goryanin
- Professor Jane Hillston Quantitative Modelling
- Professor Elham Kashefi
- Professor Mirella Lapata
- Professor
- Professor Leonid Libkin
- Professor Ursula Martin
- Professor Johanna Moore, computational linguist
- Professor Michael O'Boyle
- Professor Gordon Plotkin
- Professor Don Sannella
- Professor Mark Steedman
- Professor Keith Stenning
- Professor Austin Tate
- Professor Sethu Vijayakumar
- Professor Philip Wadler
- Professor Barbara Webb
- Professor Bonnie Webber
- Professor
Former
- Professor Jon Oberlander
Alumni
- Samson Abramsky, computer scientist at the University of Oxford
- Pat Ambler, creator of Freddy II
- Andrew Blake, computer scientist and former director of the Alan Turing Institute in London
- Bob Boyer, computer scientist, mathematician, philosopher at the University of Texas at Austin
- Rod Burstall, retired emeritus
- Luca Cardelli, computer scientist, Assistant Director of Microsoft Research, Cambridge
- Ian Clarke, creator of Freenet
- Paul Dourish, Professor at the University of California, Irvine
- Carla Gomes, computer scientist, Director of the Cornell University Institute for Computational Sustainability
- Andrew Gordon at Microsoft Research
- Michael J. C. Gordon , computer scientist at the University of Cambridge
- Richard Gregory , cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol
- Pat Hayes Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida
- Matthew Hennessy Professor at Trinity College, Dublin
- Geoffrey Hinton, informatician at Google Brain and the University of Toronto, he completed his PhD in Edinburgh in 1977.
- Mark Jerrum, now professor at the University of London
- Philipp Koehn Professor of Machine Translation at Johns Hopkins University
- Robert Kowalski, logician, computer scientist at Imperial College London
- Lǐ Wèi, mathematician and computer scientist, President of Beihang University
- Christopher Longuet-Higgins , cognitive scientist
- Donald Michie artificial intelligence pioneer
- Robin Milner , computer scientist, winner of the Turing Award
- Eugenio Moggi Professor at University of Genoa, Italy
- Faron Moller, Professor at Swansea University
- J Strother Moore, computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin
- Stephen Muggleton, computer scientist at Imperial College London
- Timothy O'Shea, Emeritus Professor and former principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh
- Robin Popplestone creator of COWSEL and POP-2
- Davide Sangiorgi, professor at the University of Bologna
- Nigel Shadbolt, Chairman of the Open Data Institute and master of Jesus College, Oxford
- Alistair Sinclair, now professor at University of California, Berkeley
- Aaron Sloman, philosopher, cognitive scientist at the University of Birmingham
- Chris Tofts, scientist at Hewlett-Packard
- Mads Tofte, professor at the IT University of Copenhagen
- Leslie Valiant winner of the Turing Award in 2010 and Professor at Harvard University
- David H. D. Warren creator of the Warren Abstract Machine
- Peter Dayan director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany
Accommodation
Until June 2008, the School was dispersed over five sites: three in the George Square Campus: Appleton Tower, Buccleuch Place, Forrest Hill; and two at King's Buildings: James Clerk Maxwell Building, and the Darwin Building.
In June and July 2008, the School's research moved into its new home, The Informatics Forum. This building for interaction designed by Bennetts Associates, Reaich and Hall and Buro Happold, now houses some 500 researchers, including staff and graduate students. Construction began in October 2005, and the Forum's completion in July 2008 finally brought the School's researchers together, under one roof, some ten years after its inception.
In August 2018, the School gained another research space in the form of the Bayes Centre, a purpose-built data science and Artificial Intelligence hub shared with multiple other data science and informatics groups, as well as the University's Maxwell Graduate Institute, encompassing the PhD research output of the mathematics departments at both Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University.