Informatics

Informatics is concerned with the study of information; how we acquire it, store it, communicate it and use computers and other machines to deal with it.  This broad ranging subject encompasses the existing fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science as well as informing and borrowing from a host of others. 

With one of the top five Informatics and Computer Science clusters in the world, Scotland is ideally placed to lead the way in this vital field and this position owes a lot to Edinburgh.  Informatics at The University of Edinburgh is confirmed as the best Computing Science department in the United Kingdom, with double the number of academics rated “World Leading” by the Research Assessment Exercise than the nearest UK competitor.  

This centre of excellence was recently re-homed in a £42 million purpose built Informatics forum that houses expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Speech Technology, Computer Architecture and Distributed, Parallel and Speckled Computing. 

The school has close ties with a number of successful indigenous and global informatics firms and works with them on a range of applications from communications to hardware and software development. 

Both Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh Napier University also have large computer science and informatics departments covering a wide range of research specialities from Database design through to Computer and Internet Security.

Speech Technology

The Centre for Speech Technology Research at The University of Edinburgh has been pioneering speech technology since 1984.  In this time they have made a number of major contributions to the field of speech technology including developing one of the most prominent open-source speech synthesis systems currently available in the form of “Festival”.  Areas of expertise include speech recognition, speech synthesis and speech signal processing.

Databases

Databases have become a ubiquitous feature of the modern workplace.  As the sheer volume of data and information that is available grows the need to manage and store it in an efficient and affordable way becomes paramount.  Research into this area forms a major part of the Computing and Informatics departments work at The University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh Napier University. 

At Heriot-Watt University the research performed by their Database group in the School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences has lead to the successful launch of the “Scottish Health on the Web”, NHS Scotland’s landmark web-based information service.

High Performance Computing

Desktop computers are continually increasing in processing power and memory.  The volume of data that needs analysed in a wide range of industries and sectors is however, also increasing.  When these datasets reach a size that an ordinary computer can no longer efficiently handle high performance supercomputers are there to pick up the baton. Edinburgh is home to the UK’s national HPC resource, HECToR.  This world-class supercomputer is housed in the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre and available to the academic and industrial communities who need to access its enormous processing power.