Research Assessment Exercise. CS applied to two separate panels, CS (14 staff) and Engineering (5 staff) but this was not well received. Seven grades 1, 2, 3b, 3a, 4, 5, and 5*. CS graded 4A. The credit for staff that moved institutions in the middle of the cycle could be shared between the two institutions.

Food Standards Authority award grant of £1.2m for investigations into GM crops.

CASIS, the Centre for Advanced Software and Intelligent Systems, was launched. This was the successor to the CIS but combined with Cardiff to cover the whole of Wales.

Dr Jianhua Shao was Deputy Director in Cardiff, with David Craddock as Manager and Rob Wyn Jones as Software Engineer.

Monet 2, the extension to the European Monet research network was funded with staff, Iain Russell and Janet Thomas.

The ISL (Intelligent Systems Laboratory) is opened, equiped with safety cages for industrial robots and large spaces for new mobile robots and the vicon vision system.

Andrew Davies, E-Minister at the National Assembly, visits the CS department on 11th November.

Ex Vice-Chancellor Gareth Owen, deceased 4 May

Wales introduces maintenance grants of up to £1,500.

Dr Myra Wilson returns as a judge for the fifth series of BBC TV's Robot Wars. The show was broadcast on BBC Two, starting in 2000 and continuing into 2001.

Myra has some photos from the series on her university web pages.

RAE 2001. The university increased its result on 1996 but in relative terms the percentage rise was below the average increase.

IMAPS was created (the Institute of Mathematics and Physical Sciences)

Aberdyfi courses running for 10 years this spring

The department hosted the AISB'03 Convention, "Cognition in Machines and Animals" from 7th to 11th May. See the full story.

Ex Vice-Chancellor Sir Goronwy Daniel, deceased 17 January

Springer publishes the book Guide to J2EE: Enterprise Java, by lecturers John Hunt and Chris Loftus.

New Vice-Chancellor: Noel Lloyd.

Aber Technium opens, Mark Lee appointed board member.

New staff - Qiang Shen and Reyer Zwiggelaar join in the summer.

New research group created - Vision, Graphics & visualisation (VGVG) - Reyer as head.

VizNet Wales, the Centre of Excellence for Visualisation in Wales is established.

Robot Scientist paper published by Nature, and the work is acclaimed in news and media articles.

Cardiff decides to become "Cardiff University" and withdraw from the University of Wales federation. This triggered the move to independence of the other constituent colleges and their shift to their own degree awarding powers.

Married couple, Qinggang Meng and Bihua Li, graduate with PhDs on the same day

Changes in Federal University indicate it is essential that Aberystwyth seeks degree awarding powers.

Mark Neal's robot sailing boat project in the news

New lab created for Computational Biology research group

National Centre for Plant and Microbial Metabolomics, large funding, N.Hardy, R.King

Centre of Excellence for Visualisation being planned. Physics and CS departments involved.

Student Mark Davies wins BCS award

New courses from September 2005 - AI & Robotics, Mobile & Wearable Computing, and Vision, Graphics & Games.

Building for new Visualisation Centre under construction.

News on sailing and rover robots

New PAT lab created (Planetary Artificial Terrain) for experimental Mars rovers.

Robot Scientist 'Adam' in news.

Researchers from Aberystwyth, including Dr Mark Neal, took part in the first Microtransat competition. This was on a lake near Toulouse in France. This was in the years before the competition made transatlantic attempts started in 2010.

As part of the break up of the federal structure of the University of Wales, UWA becomes AU (Aberystwyth University). For the history see "The Long Goodbye: leaving the federal University of Wales (1988 –2007)" by Lynn Williams, the Secretary General of the University ofWales.

Tuition fees allowed to rise to £3,000pa.

The Visualisation Centre opens. A company, See3D, is formed with director, David Neill.

The Imagine Cup - is a software competition for education from Microsoft.

The department hosted two conferences this year: Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS) 2007 and QR07, the 21st annual Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, which also included a Summer School.