Computer Laboratory, University Of Cambridge

The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. it employed 56 faculty members, 45 support staff, 105 research staff, and about 205 research students. The current Head of Department is Professor Alastair Beresford.

History

The department was founded as the Mathematical Laboratory under the leadership of John Lennard-Jones on 14 May 1937, though it did not get properly established until after World War II. The new laboratory was housed in the North Wing of the former Anatomy School, on the New Museums Site. Upon its foundation, it was intended "to provide a computing service for general use, and to be a centre for the development of computational techniques in the University". The Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science was the world's first postgraduate taught course in computing, starting in 1953.

In October 1946, work began under Maurice Wilkes on EDSAC (''Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator''), which subsequently became the world's first fully operational and practical stored program computer when it ran its first program on 6 May 1949. It inspired the world's first business computer, LEO. It was replaced by EDSAC 2, the first microcoded and bit-sliced computer, in 1958.

In 1961, David Hartley developed Autocode, one of the first high-level programming languages, for EDSAC 2. Also in that year, proposals for Titan, based on the Ferranti Atlas machine, were developed. Titan became fully operational in 1964 and EDSAC 2 was retired the following year. In 1967, a full (24/7) multi-user time-shared service for up to 64 users was inaugurated on Titan.

In 1970, the Mathematical Laboratory was renamed the Computer Laboratory, with separate departments for Teaching and Research and the Computing Service, providing computing services to the university and its colleges. The two did not fully separate until 2001, when the Computer Laboratory moved out to the new William Gates building in West Cambridge, off Madingley Road, leaving behind an independent Computing Service.

In 2002, the Computer Laboratory launched the Cambridge Computer Lab Ring, a graduate society designed by Stephen Allott named after the Cambridge Ring network.

Current

On 30 June 2017, the Cambridge University Reporter announced that the Computer Laboratory would change its name to the Department of Computer Science and Technology from 1 October 2017, to reflect the broadened scope of its purpose and activities.

The department currently offers a 3-year undergraduate course and a 1-year masters course (with a large selection of specialised courses in various research areas). Recent research has focused on virtualisation, security, usability, formal verification, formal semantics of programming languages, computer architecture, natural language processing, mobile computing, wireless networking, biometric identification, robotics, routing, positioning systems and sustainability (''"Computing for the future of the planet"''). Members have been involved in the creation of many successful UK IT companies such as Acorn, ARM, and XenSource.

Staff

Professors

, the department employs 34 professors. Notable ones include:

* Alan F. Blackwell, Professor of Interdisciplinary Design
* Ann Copestake, Professor of Computational Linguistics
* Jon Crowcroft, Marconi Professor of Communications Systems
* Hatice Gunes, Professor of Affective Intelligence and Robotics
* Neil Lawrence, Deepmind Professor of Machine learning
* Anil Madhavapeddy, Professor of Planetary Computing
* Cecilia Mascolo, Professor of Mobile Systems
* Lawrence Paulson, Professor of Computational Logic

Other notable staff include Sue Sentance, Robert Watson, Markus Kuhn.

Former staff

Former staff include:

* Ross J. Anderson,
* Jean Bacon
* James Davenport
* Andrew D. Gordon
* Philip Hazel
* Andy Hopper
* Robin Milner