Mark Lee 2

Obviously 2020 has been a challenging year but despite our physical building closing with the rest of campus at the end of March, we have stayed active as a School via video conferencing, and other collaborative tools – if anything, this crisis has demonstrated the key role of computing in all of our lives. Along with the rest of campus, our School will physically reopen in September in time for the new academic year.

A key challenge was to allow students to complete their degrees and graduate in July. We achieved this with our first virtual graduation ceremony and we look forward to welcoming back the graduates of 2020 for a campus-based celebration in 2021. Congratulations to our newest alumni.

Artificial Intelligence and Data Science have become areas of growth at Birmingham and we have recruited some outstanding new staff to the school and we will launch two new advanced MSc programmes in these areas in September.

I'd like to say a big thank you to those of you who have kindly volunteered with the School over the academic year. This includes mentoring our students, offering careers or project advice and featuring at Open Days or outreach events. 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.

Finally can I wish you all the very best of health and I look forward to welcoming you back to Birmingham in the near future.

With very best wishes,

Professor Mark Lee
Head of School, Computer Science

Read the 2020 Computer Science Alumni Newsletter here.