University of Edinburgh School of Informatics Information

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.

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 (REF), successor to Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), ranking. The School of Informatics was ranked 12th in the world by the QS World University Rankings 2014.

The School of Informatics was awarded a 5*A in the UK HEFCEs 2001 RAE, the only computer science department in the country to achieve this highest possible rating. In the 2008 RAE, the Schools "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*)". 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*. 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 seven research Institutes:

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.

The Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications (CISA) does basic and applied research and development in knowledge representation and reasoning.

The Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) is a technology transfer organisation that promotes the benefits of the application of Artificial intelligence research to commercial, industrial, and government organisations worldwide.

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.

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

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.

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

Senior academic staff include:

Alumni of the school of informatics include:

The Edinburgh Cowgate fire of December 2002 destroyed a number of buildings, including 80 South Bridge, which housed around one third of the school and its renowned AI library. Space was quickly made available in the Universitys Appleton Tower as a replacement.[when?]

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 Kings Buildings: James Clerk Maxwell Building, and the Darwin Building.

In June and July 2008, the Schools research moved into its new home, The Informatics Forum. This building for interaction designed by Bennetts Associates, Reaich and Hall and Buro Happold, now[when?] houses some 500 researchers, including staff and graduate students. Construction began in October 2005, and the Forums completion in July 2008 finally brought the Schools 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 Universitys Maxwell Graduate Institute, encompassing the PhD research output of the mathematics departments at both Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University.

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