About Computer Science
With strong industry links that inform the curriculum and a stimulating learning environment that boasts state-of-the-art facilities, the Department of Computer Science at Loughborough is renowned for providing students with cutting-edge skills and knowledge required to work in the fast-paced world of computing and technology.
Top 15 in the UK for Computer Science
in The Guardian University Guide 2023.
Founded in 1974, the Department of Computer Science at Loughborough University has a long track record of developing skilled and highly employable graduates, as well as a reputation for cutting edge research and industry engagement.
The lecturers teach you from the ground up, not expecting you to have any prior knowledge - this not only helps people that haven't studied computer science before, but also ensures that everyone has a solid understanding of the basics
Based in the multi-million pound refurbished Haslegrave Building, the Department is one of the largest within the School of Science. It brings together a lively community of over 40 members of staff, around 700 undergraduates, 100 taught MSc students and 50 research students.
Committed to providing the best teaching and learning environment, our students benefit not only from excellent facilities and world-class cutting edge research carried out by staff, but from our enviable international industry links. Our Industry Liaison Committee represents leading UK and international companies, providing regular input to curriculum development, career advice to students and additional teaching resources.
These links with industry ensure the Department of Computer Science sits at the forefront of technological development – and also provide early opportunities for students to secure employment.
Our degree programmes are regularly reviewed to maintain teaching quality and relevance geared to meeting the challenges of a rapidly evolving subject - a factor reflected by our excellent graduate employment record. We make improvements based on feedback from students, senior industrialists and accrediting bodies such as TechSkills and the British Computer Society.
The department is active in research and enterprise, with academic staff, researchers and PhD students engaging in high profile projects that continue to make a positive impact and have real world exposure in areas such as computer networks, robotics and AI.
Principal topics
DCFS focuses on the descriptional complexity of formal systems and structures, along with their applications. The conference covers a broad range of topics in this area, including but not limited to:
- Automata, grammars, languages and other formal systems; various modes of operations and complexity measures.
- Succinctness of description of objects, state-explosion-like phenomena.
- Circuit complexity of Boolean functions and related measures.
- Size complexity of formal systems.
- Structural complexity of formal systems.
- Trade-offs between computational models and mode of operation.
- Applications of formal systems – for instance in software and hardware testing, in dialogue systems, in systems modeling or in modeling natural languages – and their complexity constraints.
- Co-operating formal systems.
- Size or structural complexity of formal systems for modeling natural languages.
- Complexity aspects related to the combinatorics of words.
- Descriptional complexity in resource-bounded or structure-bounded environments.
- Structural complexity as related to descriptional complexity.
- Frontiers between decidability and undecidability.
- Universality and reversibility.
- Nature-motivated (bio-inspired) architectures and unconventional models of computing.
- Blum Static (Kolmogorov/Chaitin) complexity, algorithmic information.
The proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
A journal special issue on JALC - Journal of Automata, Languages and Combinatorics containing selected accepted papers - is planned.