Viewpoint

Summer 2007

Emerging scientific disciplines such as informatics have the potential to transform our lives, yet fewer young people are studying the subject at university level. Morna Findlay, school liaison officer at the university of Edinburgh school of informatics, hopes to change that

The School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh – formed from the merger of our Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science departments – is the biggest in the UK. We collaborate with lots of other universities in the UK and abroad – we have forged very strong links with Stanford University in California, for example. My primary role is to increase the number of students in the School of Informatics. I also work with my colleagues in other Scottish universities to encourage more school pupils to study computer science, computing and related degrees.

Informatics explained

Informatics is the study of systems that store, process and communicate information. The brain, computers, the World Wide Web and mobiles are all examples of informatics in action. There is information everywhere and informatics is the study of what we can do with it. We have very strong links with other departments such as psychology and linguistics as well as philosophy, biological sciences and medicine and the traditional links with physics and mathematics. We have mathematicians here with dusty blackboards, robot scientists, and linguists who are interested in how we process language.

A lot of our students become the informatics and computing scientists of the future, working for companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Google and Pixar. However, the world of finance is another major destination and it attracts many of our highest-paid graduates. A number of our graduates also set up their own companies and it’s part of the role of our new commercialisation arm to assist them in doing so.

Sadly, despite the growing importance of this subject, the number of students taking up computer science is falling across the western world. Maybe kids today think they already know about computing because they have a mobile that takes photos and records sound and a laptop that connects to the web, but they think they know more than they actually do. When students come here they are often in for a surprise! We start with the basics and look at computing from a scientific point of view, then ask them what computing will be like in five, 10 or 20 years, and that really challenges them.

Engaging future experts

Visiting primary and secondary schools is the best way to plant a seed and hopefully encourage kids to take up the subject. Pupils also have a valuable opportunity to visit us here and see what our students actually do. It’s very sad, but I think children prefer to see scientists without wrinkles! I find that taking our equipment along to school visits to show pupils informatics at work is highly effective. It’s great fun to take an Aibo along to a class. It’s really sweet and interesting but it’s not the R2D2 or Bender of Sci-Fi help us get the message across.

When I talk to kids about informatics, I prefer to show them the big picture. For instance, I like to ask them: ‘why is it that in the movies aliens always speak English? For years now, Star Trek and other Sci-Fi shows have featured a universal language. When will I be able to talk into a mobile with my Glaswegian accent and have it come out as Parisian French on the other end?’ It turns out that many of the innovations we imagined in science fiction of the 40s, 50s and 60s are very difficult to create, but trying to solve these problems is fun and interesting. Just maybe there is somebody in a Scottish school today who has the answers.

Come visit

Our new Informatics Forum, scheduled for completion later this year, offers a valuable opportunity to introduce our work to the public. The Forum will host some 600 researchers, academics and students in state-of-the-art labs, but there will also be special areas dedicated to public engagement with science. There is an area for showcasing art that communicates scientific ideas, a chill-out zone and a conference area. We are very keen to show this off to any schools that wish to visit us.

The new Forum is intended to be as much a public space as an academic building. One wall will be comprised of a giant projector screen which has the capability to interact with passers-by on the street. For example, if you have a Bluetooth phone it can send you a message! As with the Aibo, this technology illustrates to the public the tangible results of computing and science subjects such as informatics. I like to think they inject some excitement back into the study of science.

More information

The number of young people studying science at school and university level is dropping, making it a key area of focus for the new Curriculum for Excellence. Morna Findlay and her colleagues are keen to visit schools and inspire pupils to think in new ways about the possibilities that modern-day science can hold. For more information, email morna@inf.ed.ac.uk