The School

History

The School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering was inaugurated on 1st August 2007. It was created by merging two long-established departments: The Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering.  This is in recognition of the ever increasing synergy and overlap between the two disciplines.

The Department of Electronic Systems Engineering was founded in 1966 as the Department of Electrical Engineering Sciences and throughout its 40-year history has been one of the leading electronics and telecommunications departments in the country.

The Department's MSc Masters course in Telecommunications was the first one in the world to cover the complete telecommunication system, including both switching and transmission. This course attracted considerable interest from its very start. British Telecommunications Laboratories sponsored the course in the early years, investing over £2M pounds in lectureships and studentships. The number of international students on the course has been unusually high for an MSc course, regularly between 50 - 100 students/year. Many of these former students are now in top positions in their national telecommunications authorities. One student even went on to become an astronaut.

Departmental research has spanned a wide variety of topics in electronics and telecommunications. For example, the world's first telephone based system for deaf people to communicate with each other was invented and developed in the department by Don Pearson in 1981. The system was based on sign language - cameras and display devices were able to work within the limited telephone bandwidth to enable sign language communication two decades before the widespread use of broadband and web-cameras.

More recently, a streamlined protocol system for worldwide high speed optical communications has been invented in the department. Formerly seven layers were needed. The research showed that only three of these are necessary for optical networks. The work also showed how a worldwide network (an optical fibre ring around the whole planet) could be managed, including quality of service and account management.

The Department of Computer Science was also founded in 1966, and is one of the most well established departments in the UK.  The founding professor was Tony Brooker, who came to Essex from Manchester where he had worked with Alan Turing.  He was the inventor of the compiler-compiler, one of the earliest applications of a formal understanding of the nature of programming languages.  In the early 1970s the department was world renowned for it work on theory, numerical optimisation and Artificial Intelligence.  The department produced the first MSc on the Theory of Programming Languages (1970; Laski, Turner) called Program Linguistics.  Charles Broyden in 1970 developed the BFGS method for numerical optimisation.  The method is still the industry standard, in constant use around the world after nearly 40 years.

It was one of the first departments in the UK to be seriously interested in artificial intelligence, with work during the 1970s on simulation of societies by Jim Doran and the representation of ordinary knowledge by Pat Hayes, with his pioneering work on naive physics and commonsense reasoning.  In 1984 Ray Turner produced the first book on Logics for AI.

In recent years the department has attracted many new highly research active staff, and is proud of its world-leading research in areas such as Evolutionary Computation, Brain-Computer Interfacing, Intelligent Inhabited Environments and Financial Forecasting.  The Robotics research group is the largest of its kind in the UK, and has recently been making the news with advances in Biologically Inspired Robotics and Human Centred Robotics.

Location

The School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering is in the Colchester campus (the main campus of the University of Essex) on Squares 1 and 2.  The School has two main entrances, which are shown in the photographs below.

All the facilities of the main campus are within easy reach, including the Library, Student Union, shops, cafés and bars.

Our Buildings

The School is housed in two buildings.  The Networks Centre on Square 1 was constructed in 2003-4.  The building includes a workshop, a large electronics teaching laboratory, specialised research laboratories for optical communications and networks, robotics arena, intelligent dormitory (iSpace), staff and administrative offices, office space for research students, a seminar room equipped with professional quality 5-channel audio systems, and a common room.  The building was constructed with the aid of a grant from the Science Research Investment Fund (SRIF).

This connects to our space in the Computing Building on Square 2, linked to our main building by a footbridge. This space includes the School's own computer laboratories, for use only by students registered in the School. (Students also have access to the many other computer rooms provided by the University's Computing Service). The School has five computer laboratories at present, ranging in size from 17 to 66 seats. In addition, this building houses a media studio with high-definition Sony cameras and recording to video tape and DVD disk, the Brooker robotics and embedded systems laboratory, the School's General Office, space for research students, staff and technical support office space.

Our technical facilities are described in more detail on other pages.