University of Toronto Department of Computer Science


The Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto is an administrative unit within the Faculty of Arts and Science. The Department is one of the highest-ranked Computer Science departments worldwide, placing first among Canadian universities.

History

In 1947, Professors B. A. Griffith and A. F. C Stevenson of the Department of Mathematics and V. G. Smith of the Department of Engineering applied for a $10,000 grant from the National Research Council to open a computing department at the University of Toronto. In September 1947 the first funds were provided by the NRC to purchase two IBM punch card mechanical calculators and two assistants to run them; Beatrice Worsley joined the new department in January 1948. In 1951, the Computation Centre was established, with Calvin Gotlieb as its first faculty member. The Centre housed the first electronic computer in Canada, a Ferranti Mark 1 named "FERUT".
The Computation Centre was renamed the Institute for Computer Science in 1962, before being absorbed by the newly-created Department of Computer Science in 1964. The new department, with only six faculty members and four graduate students, had Canada's only computer science doctorate program at the time. The Dynamic Graphics Project was founded as a research laboratory of the Department in 1967. An undergraduate program was introduced in 1971, and the Department became an administrative unit in the Faculty of Arts and Science in 1981.
The Bahen Centre for Information Technology opened in 2002 and became the central hub of computer science and engineering activities along with the Stanford Fleming Building. The Department of Mathematical and Computational Sciences at the University of Toronto Mississauga was formed in 2003.

Academics

Research Groups

The Department has sixteen research groups:
The Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto consistently ranks among the highest in the world. In 2018, the University of Toronto was ranked first in Canada in the subject of Computer Science by the QS World University Rankings, first in Canada by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and first in Canada by the Maclean's University Rankings.

Notable faculty