General Information

The Department of Computer Science was founded in 1967 when the first professorship in computer science was established at the University of Helsinki. The Department belongs to the Faculty of Science, and it is located in Vallila, Helsinki. In Finland, the Department is the largest computer science department in a full-fledged university.

The educational programme of the Department is divided into three subprogrammes: Computer Science, Applied Computer Science and Teacher in Computer Science. The subprogramme Computer Science is further divided into five specialisation areas, which correspond to the research areas of the Department: algorithms and data structures, intelligent systems, software engineering, distributed systems and data communication, and information systems.

The aim of the programme is twofold. Firstly, the programme strives to provide a modern and all-round advanced level education of computer experts for the needs of the industry sector. Secondly, the Department seeks to be among the top-most research institutes within selected research areas of computer science.

Education at the Department is based on the established core computer science but adapts to new needs of the evolving discipline. The combination of theory and practice is stressed, and special emphasis is given to software design and engineering.

In research and in education, cooperation with the rest of the university and with the industry sector is considered to be of great significance. The Department has joint research activities with several departments of the University of Helsinki and with several information-technology oriented departments of other universities. In addition, the Department has research cooperation with approximately 40 different companies (1999).