Greetings,
It is an exciting time for Computer Science.
Breakthroughs in Computer Science continue to impact on every aspect of our daily lives from how business works to cutting edge applications in healthcare, science and engineering. Our Cyber Security Group's work on analysing the dangers involved in cyber attacks against cars and the rail network have been covered in the national press, while recent work by Professor Hamid Deghani and his Imaging Group in collaboration with academics from the Medical School have developed a rapid non-invasive technique for accurately diagnosing Rheumatoid arthritis.
The importance of this impact is reflected in our School's growth. This year we have recruited twelve new members of staff to strength our research interests in cyber security, artificial intelligence and theoretical computer science. In addition, two professors from the Department of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering, Professor Martin Russell and Professor Chris Baber, have joined us as full members of staff. We also have made an exciting joint appointment with the School of Law in Professor Karen Yeung joining us as an Interdisciplinary Professorial Fellow in Law, Ethics and Informatics.
We continue to be successful in attracting highly skilled undergraduate and postgraduate students. We expect our first year undergraduate cohort to be the largest yet with potentially over 300 new students both from the UK and overseas.
This year we also saw the promotion to Chair of Professor Dave Parker. Prof Parker's research focus is on the automatic verification of software to ensure safety, reliability and performance. Recently this work has been applied to the verification of robots and unmanned submarines. Prof Parker is also an alumnus of the School having completed his first degree at Birmingham in 2008 and his PhD in 2011.
And finally, a big thank you to the 33 Computer Science alumni who have kindly volunteered with the School over the last academic year. This includes 13 mentors, at least 7 who offered careers advice and 4 graduates featured at Open Days. Thank you, you've made a real impact here! If you'd like to get involved too, please get in touch with our Alumni Relations Manager, Grace Surman on eps-community@contacts.bham.ac.uk.
With best regards
Mark Lee
Deputy Head of School
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mgl