The Department of Computing (DoC) is the computer science department at Imperial College London. The department has around 50 academic staff and 1000 students, with around 600 studying undergraduate courses, 200 PhD students, and 200 MSc students. The department is predominantly based in the Huxley Building, 180 Queen's Gate, which it shares with the Maths department, however also has space in the William Penney Laboratory and in the Aeronautics and Chemical Engineering Extension. The department ranks 7th in the Times Higher Education 2020 subject world rankings.
History
The origins of the department start with the formation of the Computer Unit in 1964, led by Stanley Gill, out of the Department of Electrical Engineering. However, earlier work had also been done by the Department of Mathematics, which had built the Imperial College Computing Engine, an early digital relay computer. In 1966, the postgraduate Centre for Computing and Automation came into being and consumed the pre-existing Computer Unit, with John Westcott migrating his Control Group from the Electrical Engineering department and joining Stanley Gill as joint head. In 1970, Gill left for industry, the department was renamed to The Department of Computing and Control, and Westcott became the head.
In 1972, Manny Lehman joined the department and with Westcott, developed the first undergraduate course (BSc). Before Lehman joined, there was some progress towards the design of an undergraduate course; however, Lehman found this to be too mathematical and also Westcott didn't wish to compete with the hardware focus of Manchester University. Therefore, it was decided to focus the course on the creation of software and related methodologies. The first intake for the course was in 1973, and the first graduates in 1976. On the research front, the department held a logic programming workshop, which "evolved into the ICLP" (International Conference on Logic Programming).
The department moved to the Huxley Building in 1977. In 1979 Westcott's term as head of department came to an end and the position was up for renewal, it was given to Lehman. During Westcott's term, the control engineers had been doing most of the research in the department, and the computer scientists doing most of the teaching; in order to establish Computing as its own subject, then Rector Lord Flowers advised Lehman to send Westcott and his control group back to Electrical Engineering, and the department assumed its current name, the Department of Computing. Lehman started designing a Software Engineering course, his belief was that software engineering is practical by nature and as part of the course wanted students to have industrial experience. However, professional software engineering was not as it is today and Lehman founded IST to provide a place for Imperial students to get some practical experience.
Throughout the 80s, the department was recognised as a "leading centre for logic programming", and by 1985 the size of the logic programming group had grown to 50. In 1980, Keith Clark co-founded Logic Programming Associates, which aimed to apply the results of the logic programming group's research to industrial problems.
When Lehman's term came up for renewal in 1984, he was not reappointed and instead went to work full time for IST. Bruce Sayers, the then head of Electrical Engineering was appointed as head of the department. Over the course of his term, Sayers "doubled the size of the department", but this increase caused office spaces to become over-occupied, and required more teaching space. To remedy this the Holland Club moved out of the Huxley Building and lecture theatres 308 and 311 were constructed in their place, furthermore, the William Penney Laboratory was constructed in 1988. Sayers later became the head of the Centre for Cognitive Systems, which resided in the newly built William Penney Laboratory. In 1993, IC-PARC was founded, also residing in the William Penney Laboratory. It span out in 1999 to create Parc Technologies and the centre was later shut down in 2005.