About

The Department of Computer Science was 50 years old in 2020. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hold a reunion or other celebratory event then, but some of us started compiling a departmental history in the form of a database and website. This should be useful for publicity, engaging alumni, and keeping a record of CS for the future.

This website contains the information that we have gathered so far.

We are still working on parts of this, but we are getting closer to having the site so that it is ready to go public. To do that, we need your help!

We are asking for your help in two areas: contributions (of stories, data, and images), and finding errors.

When you look at the website you will see that some parts have plenty of text and images, while others clearly need more. If you have any images, anecdotes, descriptions of your work or any aspect of the department, please sent it to us for incorporation.

Regarding errors, we know there are some (many?) so please help us in the following areas:

• There are errors in the current staff data. So please could you all check your own staff data. If you enter your name in the Staff section you should see a dated list of roles you have held in the department.
• We have had a lot of help but some sections are still incomplete. These include the Teaching section which needs much more input. People have expert personal knowledge about the courses they taught and/or the environment the students experienced at various times. The idea is to show the teaching experience and how it changed over the years. Please contribute your knowledge of this important area.
• Three of the research groups have entries but two still need to get their stories together. Could the Advanced Reasoning and Bioinformatics groups please help here. This seems to concern CHZ8, THJ10, CJP, NNS, NCM, RKJ and AFC, WAA2, NWH, CUL, EDS, respectively. Regarding research grants, could the project PIs and Co-Is please check for any errors in the data for their grants.

We are working on the English text first, but we plan to have a Welsh language version of the content.

Of course, there can be data errors anywhere. In particular, the difference between the calendar year and the academic year can give rise to dates being in error by plus or minus one year. 

Work is continuing on styling the site, and some bits don't work as expected. The work on styling and functionality will continue whilst we work with you on the content to be displayed.

Please email any text, images, edits and corrections to cs-history@aber.ac.uk.

Many thanks for your help,

Neil Taylor and Mark Lee