Aberystwyth hosted Microtransat Challenge 2007, the second 'warm-up event' preparing teams for the transatlantic race for autonomous boats. See the Microtransat website for the history of the competition. There is a blog about the work of the Aberystwyth teams on this challenge between 2008 and 2013.

Sam Wakeling, a student in the department, achieved the Guinness World Record for Longest continuous unicycle ride on 29 September 2007. Sam rode his unicycle around the University's sports centre track for 24 hours and covered 169.9km in that time.

RAE 2008. Four grades 1*,2*,3*,4* CS was top in Wales and in top 20 of UK, as 100% international quality, 70% world leading or internationally excellent. (quality profile: 25% 4*, 45% 3*, 30% 2*) GPA =2.95. Sharing of staff was abolished. Submission required four research outputs, published from each full-time member of staff. Each assessment unit had a quality profile (of proportions in these grades), instead of a single grade for an entire subject area. This was done to counter the criticism that large departments were able to hide a "very long tail" of lesser work and still get high ratings and, conversely, excellent staff in low-graded departments were unable to receive adequate funding.

Robot Scientist - needs more -

Idris, a 4x4 robot, webt on its first deployment and laser scanned the Vivian slate quarry in Llanberis.

Qiang Shen wins the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Outstanding Paper Award (Trans Fuzzy Systems)

A CS student team won the Silver award in the Microsoft Imagine Cup, Software Design Challenge, supported by Chris Loftus and Sandy Spence.

Members of the department establish a sub-branch of BCS South Wales, part of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT. This was the first step in setting up a full branch.

Software Alliance Wales, to run for 5 years, funded by European Social Fund for £1,003,361. Chris Price is AU lead.

Qiang Shen becomes the Head of Department.

The Mid-Wales branch of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, is formed, with members of the department taking positions in the committee. Fred Long becomes the Chair of the branch and other members include Frank Bott, Hannah Dee and Neil Taylor.

The department creates its Twitter account, @AberCompSci, used for publicity of the department's activities.

New Vice-Chancellor: April McMahon

iCub humanoid robot acquired by Developmental Robotics Group, only 4 in UK.

Tuition fees rise to £9,000pa.

College-wide consultation on the academic structure. The 17 departments in 3 faculties eventually became 7 institutes, with reduced administrative posts.

We grew two sunflowers (named 0 and 1 after a student vote) for the centenary of Alan Turing in 2012. Turing had worked on some bioinformatics: counting Fibonacci numbers in sunflower spirals shortly before his death.

James Law, in the Intelligent Robotics group, creates a video of the iCub humanoid robot dancing to 'I bet you look good on the dance floor' from the Arctic Monkeys.

See the video on YouTube.

Researcher James Law made a successful bid for the department to be a 2012 Olympic torchbearer in the UK Torch Relay in celebration of Alan Turing's centennial. The plan was for the iCub robot to carry the torch, but it did not meet the eligibility criteria, so the Olympic flame was carried by department head, Prof. Qiang Shen. This generated much media attention and appeared on a large number of news and technology related websites worldwide, including IEEE Spectrum and New Scientist. See Olympic Torch for more details.

Jan Pinkava, PhD graduate (1990) of the department, is made a Fellow of Aberystwyth University at a degree ceremony.

Bernie Tiddeman becomes the Head of Department.

The REF, Research Excellence Framework replaces RAE. Five grades 1*,2*,3*,4* and unclassified, as for 2008. CS GPA = 2.93. The impact of research is now a major component. But this is difficult to measure. Also it has been criticised as meaning impact outside the academy, in other words, the effects which often only manifest decades after the original work is done. This suggests a bias towards "applied research", which has a more immediate impact, but this is exactly why "applied" work was removed from the early assessment schemes.

On 12th June 2014, Dr Mark Neal ran an event at Ysgol Gymraeg in Aberystwyth to launch a high altitude balloon to take pictures of Aberystwyth from space. The highest altitude recorded was approximately 16 miles.

For more details and images and a video, see the Balloon Launch page.

A robotic orchestra from the department, created and organised by Dave Price was featured in the December Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution (Cambrian News, photo available)

Department reunion to celebrate its 45th year. Photo shows five heads of department: Qiang Shen, Bernie Tiddeman, Mike Tedd, Chris Price, and Frank Bott. See Origins for dates of their headships.

Dave Price and Ian Izett build a robot orchestra for the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures series.

Acting Vice-Chancellor: John Grattan

Maintenance grants (for lower income families) are scrapped. Welsh students can apply for grants of up to £5,190, plus a £3,810 loan to cover fees of £9,000.

New Vice-Chancellor: Elizabeth Treasure

The department started its YouTube channel, which is used for outreach and recruitment.

Thomas Jansen became the Head of Department.

Hannah Dee appeared in the Computer Weekly women in IT top 50 four years running, and was inducted into their "Hall of Fame" in 2018.

Hannah Dee is recognised in the second Suffrage Science Awards for Mathematics and Computing. The awards celebrate women in science and encourage others to enter science and reach senior leadership roles.

Members of the department setup a Code First Girls workshop at the University. Code First Girls' mission is to "close the gender gap in tech by providing employment through free education." This was part of the outreach activities that the department runs to encourage young people to consider computing as a possible topic to study.

Dave Price celebrates 40 years of working in the department.

The Computer Science department achieves the Bronze Award for Athena Swan, which is about working to support and transform gender equality for staff and students in higher education.

Ex Vice-Chancellor Noel Lloyd, deceased 7 June.

The Intelligent Robotics group creates its Twitter account, @AberRobotics. The account promotes the work of the research group and outreach events that it runs, including the Robotics Week events in June each year.

Funding from EPSRC for a Centre for Doctoral Training in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Advanced Computing - awarded to Swansea University with four others: Aberystwyth, Bangor, Bristol, and Cardiff universities. See the Aberystywth News article about this.

Preparations for REF 2021.