About the Computing Department

Our research

The Computing Department has a strong international reputation for its research and was rated 5 (excellent) in the last research assessment exercise.

“one of only a handful of centres undertaking leading edge systems research”
International Review of UK Computer Science

One of the Department's particular strengths is the overall coherence of its research, with the work clustered around systems-oriented computer science.

The research in the Department has a strong practical focus, with excellent links to industry.
The Department currently holds over £10m in grants; over 25% of this figure comes directly from industry.
In total, the Department currently comprises 25 academic staff and over a 100 researchers, creating a thriving research culture in the department.

Research areas

Research in the department is organised as a series of closely related and heavily over-lapping themes:

Collectively, this provides comprehensive coverage of the major technologies and techniques underpinning contemporary computer systems from low level networking aspects to HCI issues.

Collaboration

We have a strong tradition of collaboration both across themes and indeed across departmental boundaries. For example, Lancaster University pioneered work on social informatics, including the use of ethnographic studies to shape the design of computer systems in the workplace.

We have a range of collaborations with the:

Management School
Environmental Science Department
Department of Psychology
and participate in two EPSRC inter-disciplinary research centres: Equator and DIRC

Research for the real world

The Microsoft CE .Net platform utilises code produced by the Computing Department, the only example of Microsoft relying directly on university-produced code
[ Read more ]

We pride ourselves in our strong relationship to industry; perhaps the prime example of this is the Mobile IPv6 Systems Research Lab (MSRL), a research collaboration between Cisco Systems, Microsoft Research, Orange and ourselves. Based on this work, the department has received a prestigious Microsoft Windows Embedded Academic Excellence Award for invaluable development contributions to the Windows CE .NET platform. In particular, software produced from the project is now included in future releases of this operating system, the only example of Microsoft relying directly on university-produced code.

Read the press release on Lancasters contribution to Microsoft® Windows® .NET Server and Windows CE .NET (PDF)

Orange

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