Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge

The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is an academic department within the School of Technology at the University of Cambridge.

As of 2023, it employed 56 faculty members, 45 support staff, 105 research staff, and about 205 research students.^[1] The current Head of Department is Professor Alastair Beresford.

The department was founded as the Mathematical Laboratory under the leadership of John Lennard-Jones on 14 May 1937, though it did not get properly established until after World War II.^[2] The new laboratory was housed in the North Wing of the former Anatomy School, on the New Museums Site. Upon its foundation, it was intended "to provide a computing service for general use, and to be a centre for the development of computational techniques in the University".

In October 1946, work began under Maurice Wilkes on EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), which subsequently became the world's first fully operational and practical stored program computer when it ran its first program on 6 May 1949.^[3] It inspired the world's first business computer, LEO. It was replaced by EDSAC 2, the first microcoded and bit-sliced computer, in 1958.^[4]

The Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science was the world's first postgraduate taught course in computing, starting in 1953.^[5]

In 1961, David Hartley developed Autocode, one of the first high-level programming languages, for EDSAC 2. Also in that year, proposals for Titan, based on the Ferranti Atlas machine, were developed. Titan became fully operational in 1964 and EDSAC 2 was retired the following year. In 1967, a full (24/7) multi-user time-shared service for up to 64 users was inaugurated on Titan.

In 1970, the Mathematical Laboratory was renamed the Computer Laboratory, with separate departments for Teaching and Research and the Computing Service, providing computing services to the university and its colleges. The two did not fully separate until 2001, when the Computer Laboratory moved out to the new William Gates building in West Cambridge, off Madingley Road, leaving behind an independent Computing Service.

In 2002, the Computer Laboratory launched the Cambridge Computer Lab Ring, a graduate society designed by Stephen Allott^[6] and named after the Cambridge Ring network.^[7]

On 30 June 2017, the Cambridge University Reporter announced that the Computer Laboratory would change its name to the Department of Computer Science and Technology from 1 October 2017, to reflect the broadened scope of its purpose and activities.^[8]

The department currently offers a 3-year undergraduate course and a 1-year masters course (with a large selection of specialised courses in various research areas). Recent research has focused on virtualisation, security, usability, formal verification, formal semantics of programming languages, computer architecture, natural language processing, mobile computing, wireless networking, biometric identification, robotics, routing, positioning systems and sustainability ("Computing for the future of the planet"). Members have been involved in the creation of many successful UK IT companies such as Acorn,^[9]ARM,^[10]nCipher and XenSource.^[11][12]

Los miembros han tenido un impacto significativo en áreas como la informática, las máquinas de Turing, la microprogramación, las subrutinas, las redes informáticas, los protocolos móviles, la seguridad, los lenguajes de programación, los núcleos, los sistemas operativos, la virtualización, los sistemas de identificación de ubicación, etc. A continuación se muestra una lista.

Varias empresas han sido fundadas por personal y graduados. Sus nombres aparecieron en la nueva entrada en 2012. ^{[ 24 ]} Algunos ejemplos citados de empresas exitosas son ARM , Autonomy , Aveva , CSR y Domino . Un factor común que comparten es que el personal clave o los miembros fundadores están "profundamente formados en la universidad y la investigación". ^{[ 25 ]} El Cambridge Computer Lab Ring fue elogiado por su "trabajo incansable" por Andy Hopper en 2012, en su cena de décimo aniversario. ^{[ 26 ]}

• lowRISC