Research & Impact

The School of Computer Science & Informatics has a longstanding, strong and dynamic research culture. It is this culture that has given rise to its international reputation for world-class research in the areas of distributed & scientific computing, informatics and visual computing. The School's multidisciplinary research continues to have a positive impact in areas as diverse as healthcare, mobile communications and the environment.

Research Success

The School has collaborative research arrangements with partners worldwide and this international strength is reflected in its performance in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. Of the research submitted, 70% was considered to be in the two highest categories, with 20% in the highest 4* category of world-leading and 50% in the 3* category of internationally excellent. In terms of the proportion of 4* and 3* research, the School is ranked joint 18th in the UK out of 81 submissions.

Multidisciplinary Impact

Knowledge and expertise in each area is being applied in innovative ways to help drive forward the research agenda and help our industrial and public sector partners solve problems. Our work is therefore having an impact in a number of diverse areas such as healthcare (patient record systems and information visualisation), defense, the environment (biodiversity management and geospatial information systems), telecommunications (communications network design and virtual organisations), engineering design (especially reverse engineering of solid shape) and high-performance and Grid computing (distributed processing, knowledge management and immersive visualisation).

Strong Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration

Much of our research is interdisciplinary, in collaboration with academic schools at Cardiff and other top Universities, across the full spectrum of engineering and physical sciences, biomedical and life sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities.

Collaborations include partnerships in the Welsh Governmen's Research Institute of Visual Computing (RIVIC), a Human Factors Technology Centre and the Wales Institute of Mathematical and Computational Sciences (WIMCS). The School welcomes the development of further partnerships with industry and the public sector. If you wish to work with us please contact Professor Alun Preece.

Read more about joining us as a research student...

Excellent Research Facilities

We maintain a range of state of the art facilities including dedicated laboratories for augmented reality, Grid and cloud computing, human factors technology, security and privacy, solid modeling and visual computing.

Sustained Funding

Our national and international funding sources include The Royal Society, The Welsh Assembly (including HEFCW), The UK government (including EPSRC, DTI and OFCOM), The European Union and others. The School’s multi-million pound research is also boosted by working with its industrial partners. These include Cancer Research Wales, IBM UK, Ordnance Survey and Wellcome Trust. Our annual research income currently averages around £2 million.