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 (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.

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 (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 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 (Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications), the Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute (AIAI) 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:
 Malcolm Atkinson 
 Alan Bundy 
 Peter Buneman 
 Christopher Bishop 
 Wenfei Fan 
 Michael Fourman 
 Igor Goryanin
 Jane Hillston Quantitative Modelling
 Elham Kashefi
 Mirella Lapata 
 
 Leonid Libkin 
 Ursula Martin 
 Johanna Moore, computational linguist
 Michael O'Boyle
 Gordon Plotkin 
 Don Sannella
 Mark Steedman  
 Keith Stenning
 Austin Tate 
 Sethu Vijayakumar 
 Philip Wadler
 Barbara Webb
 Bonnie Webber

Former 

 Jon Oberlander

Notable Alumni
Alumni of the school of informatics include:
 Geoffrey Hinton , computer scientist at Google Brain and winner of the Turing Award.
 Robin Milner (1934 –2010) , computer scientist, winner of the Turing Award
 Leslie Valiant  winner of the Turing Award in 2010 and Professor at Harvard University
 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 (1948–2017) , computer scientist at the University of Cambridge
 Richard Gregory (1923–2010) , 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
Mark Jerrum, 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 (1923–2004) , cognitive scientist
 Donald Michie (1923–2007) , artificial intelligence pioneer
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 (1938–2004) creator of COWSEL and POP-2
Davide Sangiorgi, professor at the University of Bologna
 Nigel Shadbolt, Chairman of the Open Data Institute (ODI) 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
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 

The 2002 Cowgate fire destroyed a number of buildings, including 80 South Bridge, which housed around a quarter of the school and its renowned AI library. By January 2003, space was made available in the University's Appleton Tower as a replacement.

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. The building, 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.

References 

 
Computer science departments in the United Kingdom
Educational institutions established in 1998
Schools of informatics
Informatics
1998 establishments in Scotland