The UCPH Department of Computer Science ( da, Datalogisk Institut, DIKU) is a department in the
Faculty of Science
Faculty may refer to:
* Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage)
* Faculty (division), a division within a university (usage outside of the United States)
* Faculty (instrument), an instrument or warrant ...
at the
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
(UCPH). It is the longest established department of
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
in
Denmark
)
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, subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark
...
and was founded in 1970 by
Turing Award
The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
winner
Peter Naur
Peter Naur (25 October 1928 – 3 January 2016) was a Danish computer science pioneer and Turing award winner. He is best remembered as a contributor, with John Backus, to the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation used in describing the syntax for mo ...
. As of 2021, it employs 82 academic staff, 126 research staff and 38 support staff. It is consistently ranked the top
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
department in the
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; literal translation, lit. 'the North') are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It includes the sovereign states of Denmar ...
, and in 2017 was placed 9th worldwide by the
Academic Ranking of World Universities
The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ...
.
History
DIKU has its roots at the
Institute for Mathematical Sciences, where in 1963, the first computer was bought.
In 1969,
Peter Naur
Peter Naur (25 October 1928 – 3 January 2016) was a Danish computer science pioneer and Turing award winner. He is best remembered as a contributor, with John Backus, to the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation used in describing the syntax for mo ...
became the first professor in Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1970, DIKU was officially established its own department.
Research
As of 2021, the department is home to 82 academic staff, 126 research staff and 38 support staff. Research is organised into seven research sections:
* The Algorithms and Complexity Section, headed by
Mikkel Thorup
Mikkel Thorup (born 1965) is a Danish computer scientist working at University of Copenhagen.
He completed his undergraduate education at Technical University of Denmark and his doctoral studies at Oxford University in 1993. From 1993 to 1998, h ...
, who conduct basic
algorithms
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing c ...
research, as well as research on
data structures
In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...
and
computational complexity
In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations) ...
* The Human‐Centered Computing Section, headed by
Kasper Hornbæk, who research
human-computer interaction,
computer-supported cooperative work
Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...
, as well as
health informatics
Health informatics is the field of science and engineering that aims at developing methods and technologies for the acquisition, processing, and study of patient data, which can come from different sources and modalities, such as electronic hea ...
* The Image Section, headed by Kim Steenstrup Pedersen, who work on
image processing
An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...
including
medical image processing
Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to rev ...
,
computer vision
Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...
,
physics based animation and
robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...
.
* The Machine Learning Section, headed by Christina Lioma, researching theoretical
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
,
information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...
, and
machine learning in biology
* The Natural Language Processing Section, headed by Isabelle Augenstein, who conduct research on core
natural language processing
Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...
,
natural language understanding
Natural-language understanding (NLU) or natural-language interpretation (NLI) is a subtopic of natural-language processing in artificial intelligence that deals with machine reading comprehension. Natural-language understanding is considered an ...
,
computational linguistics
Computational linguistics is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, comput ...
, as well as
multimodal learning
Multimodal learning attempts to model the combination of different Modality (human–computer interaction), modalities of data, often arising in real-world applications. An example of multi-modal data is data that combines text (typically repres ...
* The Programming Languages and Theory of Computation section, headed by Martin Elsman, researching
programming languages
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
,
theory of computation
In theoretical computer science and mathematics, the theory of computation is the branch that deals with what problems can be solved on a model of computation, using an algorithm, how efficiently they can be solved or to what degree (e.g., a ...
,
computer security
Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...
, and approaches to
financial transparency
In economics, a market is transparent if much is known by many about: What products and services or capital assets are available, market depth (quantity available), what price, and where. Transparency is important since it is one of the theoretica ...
* The Software, Data, People & Society Section, headed by Thomas Troels Hildebrandt, who work on
decentralised system
A decentralised system in systems theory is a system in which lower level components operate on local information to accomplish global goals. The global pattern of behaviour is an emergent property of dynamical mechanisms that act upon local co ...
s,
data management systems, and
process modelling
The term process model is used in various contexts. For example, in business process modeling the enterprise process model is often referred to as the ''business process model''.
Overview
Process models are processes of the same nature that a ...
Teaching
The department offers programmes at BSc as well as MSc level, both in core computer science and in interdisciplinary subjects. Bachelor's programmes are 3-year programmes and mostly taught in Danish, whereas Master's programmes are 2-year programmes and taught in English. In 2020, DIKU enrolled 610 new Bachelor's students and 136 new Master's students.
As of 2021, DIKU offers the following study programmes:
* Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science
* Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Machine Learning and Data Science
* Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Computer Science and Economy
* Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Communication and IT
* Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Health and IT
* Master of Science (MSc) in Computer Science
* Part-time Master of Science (MSc) in Computer Science
* Master of Science (MSc) in IT and Cognition
* Master of Science (MSc) in Communication and IT
In addition, the department awards the research degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). PhD students are enrolled in the
Faculty of Science
Faculty may refer to:
* Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage)
* Faculty (division), a division within a university (usage outside of the United States)
* Faculty (instrument), an instrument or warrant ...
's Doctoral School for a typical study period of between three and four years.
Location
DIKU is based at
University Park in Copenhagen, part of the university's
North Campus. Its building complex comprises the former Department of Anatomy. The building was completed in 1942 to design by
Kaj Gottlob
Niels August Theodor Kaj Gottlob, usually known as Kaj Gottlob, (9 November 1887 – 12 May 1976) was a Danish architect who contributed much to Neoclassicism and Functionalism both as professor of the School of Architects at the Royal Danish Aca ...
.
The Human-Centered Computing Section is located in Sigurdsgade, close to the North Campus.
Student life
An important social event is the DIKU
revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own duri ...
which is held each year in June. The DIKU revue is always in competition with the
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
revue and never misses an opportunity to computer-animate the complete and utter destruction of the physics institute at the
H. C. Ørsted Institute.
As something unique among the institutes of Copenhagen University, the DIKU cantine is entirely student driven and open 24 hours. It is the natural hub for all social events on DIKU.
The two largest social events are the DIKU revue and the ''Julefrokost'' (Christmas lunch) of the canteen.
Notable faculty
*
Corinna Cortes
Corinna Cortes is a Danish computer scientist known for her contributions to machine learning. She is currently the Head of Google Research, New York City, New York. Cortes is a recipient of the Paris Kanellakis Award, Paris Kanellakis Theory and ...
, who co-developed the highly influential supervised
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
method
support vector machines
In machine learning, support vector machines (SVMs, also support vector networks) are supervised learning models with associated learning algorithms that analyze data for classification and regression analysis. Developed at AT&T Bell Laboratorie ...
, has been an adjunct professor at the department since 2011.
*
Mikkel Thorup
Mikkel Thorup (born 1965) is a Danish computer scientist working at University of Copenhagen.
He completed his undergraduate education at Technical University of Denmark and his doctoral studies at Oxford University in 1993. From 1993 to 1998, h ...
, best known for his work on
shortest path problem
In graph theory, the shortest path problem is the problem of finding a path between two vertices (or nodes) in a graph such that the sum of the weights of its constituent edges is minimized.
The problem of finding the shortest path between tw ...
in undirected graphs, has been a professor at the department since 2013.
*
Kasper Hornbæk, who won a
SIGCHI
The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI).
It hosts the flagship annual international HC ...
Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on usability in
human-computer interaction, has been a professor at the department since 2014.
*
Serge Belongie, known for his work on
object recognition
Object recognition – technology in the field of computer vision for finding and identifying objects in an image or video sequence. Humans recognize a multitude of objects in images with little effort, despite the fact that the image of the ...
and
image segmentation
In digital image processing and computer vision, image segmentation is the process of partitioning a digital image into multiple image segments, also known as image regions or image objects ( sets of pixels). The goal of segmentation is to simpl ...
, has been a professor at the department since 2021.
Notable alumni
*
Peter Naur
Peter Naur (25 October 1928 – 3 January 2016) was a Danish computer science pioneer and Turing award winner. He is best remembered as a contributor, with John Backus, to the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation used in describing the syntax for mo ...
, a
Turing Award
The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
recipient, was a professor at the department between 1969 and 1998.
*
Per Brinch Hansen
Per Brinch Hansen (13 November 1938 – 31 July 2007) was a Danish-American computer scientist known for his work in operating systems, concurrent programming and parallel and distributed computing.
Biography
Early life and education
Per Br ...
, a
IEEE Computer Pioneer Award
The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. T ...
winner, was a professor at the department between 1984 and 1987.
*
Mads Tofte
Mads Tofte (born 20 April 1959) is a Danish computer scientist who has contributed in particular to functional programming and the Standard ML programming language.
Education
Tofte was born in Lyngby, Denmark and grew up in Holbæk, Denmark. ...
, the first managing director of the
IT University of Copenhagen
The IT University of Copenhagen (Danish language, Danish: ''IT-Universitetet i København'', abbreviated ITU) is a public university and research institution in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is specialized in the Academic discipline#Multidisciplinary, ...
and co-developer of the
Standard ML
Standard ML (SML) is a general-purpose, modular, functional programming language with compile-time type checking and type inference. It is popular among compiler writers and programming language researchers, as well as in the development of the ...
programming language, who graduated with a MSc in Computer Science and Mathematics in 1984.
*
Michael Seifert, a Danish computer programmer who developed the popular multiplayer text-based role-playing game
DikuMud
DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based role-playing game, which is a type of multi-user domain (MUD). It was written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Stærfeldt at DIKU (''Datalogisk In ...
, was a BSc then MSc student at the department from 1990 to 1996.
Miscellaneous
The
domain
Domain may refer to:
Mathematics
*Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined
**Domain of definition of a partial function
**Natural domain of a partial function
**Domain of holomorphy of a function
* Do ...
diku.dk
was registered on October 29, 1987, and was one of the first
.dk
.dk is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Denmark. The supervision of the .dk top-level domain is handled exclusively by DK Hostmaster. Any new .dk domain name has to be applied for via an approved registrar. Then the domain name appl ...
domain names to be registered.
The popular
DikuMUD
DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based role-playing game, which is a type of multi-user domain (MUD). It was written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Stærfeldt at DIKU (''Datalogisk In ...
codebase was developed at DIKU in March 1990, and derives its name from the institute.
In the 1994 Danish
thriller Nattevagten (
Nightwatch) directed by
Ole Bornedal
Ole Bornedal (born 26 May 1959) is a Danish film director, actor and producer.
Bornedal was born in Nørresundby, Denmark. He wrote and directed '' Nattevagten'' (''Nightwatch'', 1994), a thriller about a law student who works in a morgue as ...
, the main entrance and stairwell of the institute was used as a main location.
References
External links
DIKU homepageDIKU's history
{{Authority control
University of Copenhagen
Computer science departments
Educational institutions established in 1970
Educational institutions in Denmark