Computer Science

In less than fifty years, computer science has gone from the phase of infancy to that of a scientific discipline in its own right. Never has a discipline born of human intellectual activity made so much progress in such a short time. With a view to accompanying and actively participating in this development, the Department of Computer Science offers programs deliberately constructed around the scientific aspects of the field and conducts advanced research in all areas of computer systems and their applications.

Computer science is omnipresent and has penetrated all areas of human activity. At the same time, the discipline has become essential for illustrating and understanding complex phenomena in numerous other disciplines. Therefore, by studying scientific computer science, one places oneself at the center of all other activities, whether in the economic, governmental, industrial, administrative, scientific, legal, artistic, service, medical, environmental, humanitarian or banking sectors.

Since its beginnings, the department’s research teams have worked at the most advanced levels in numerous key fields: numerical imagery and multimedia, high-performance calculation and parallelism, distributed systems, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, software engineering and theoretical computer science. Fundamental and applied research are the main objectives of these teams. There is also strong emphasis on interdisciplinary research and on the applications that stimulate basic research. Interdisciplinary research is conducted in such areas as biology, psychology, linguistics, physics, medicine, economics, finance and various branches of the engineering sciences. Close contact and numerous collaborative projects have been developed with departments of other universities as well as with companies in all sectors of the economy, both in Switzerland and abroad. The department participates regularly in numerous national and European research programs.

The objective of our work is to significantly improve the way people live and work, by constantly seeking a balance between technological feasibility and utility for human beings. One example is our research on the brain-machine interface, whose goal (inter alia) is to allow handicapped people access to the most sophisticated computer systems.