Careers
Computers are now ubiquitous in modern life. The most interesting and best-paid opportunities in the future are open to those who really know about computing, software and information systems.
Sectors
The dot com boom may have passed, but graduates with degrees in computing still have excellent prospects of employment, in fields that will shape our society. Here are just a few examples:
Media
Have you ever seen the inside of a television, radio or music recording studio? If so, you will appreciate the extensive interdependence of media and information technology. Applications include advanced CGI for films, creative web access to museum collections, tools for music composition, and new media such as virtual reality.
User Friendly Technology
New technology often brings new problems. Improving the interface, for example, by building computer systems that can understand everyday language, will make technology more accessible to all. Complex systems, such as coordinating emergency services or environmental monitoring, require advanced information processing methods.
Mobile Systems
From mobile phones to iPods, there has been an explosion in the amount of information we can carry with us, or access on the move. Computation and information processing is at the root of advance in the management of this technology, from compression algorithms for pictures and sounds, to faster and more reliable communication networks.
Medical
Modern medicine depends on IT. Many doctors regularly use expert computer systems to aid them in diagnosis and prescription. Visual inspection has to be automated if large-scale screening programs are to be effective. Unravelling the genome would have been impossible without advanced computation.
Who employs our graduates?
A great number of our graduates work in academia. A second major destination for our graduates is the IT industry where they make vocational use of their studies by working as IT consultants, programmers and developers and here are some examples of employers.
Take inspiration from the career paths of some of our graduates, listed below.
Gerry Altman
Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of York, Editor-in-Chief of Cognition. Works on adult cognition and neuropsychology, language processing.
Aude Billard
Professor, Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Works on gesture/speech interfaces to robots and learning by imitation.
Jose Carmena
Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Works on brain-machine interfaces.
Peter Dayan
Director, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit. Works on mathematical and computational models of neural processing, with a particular emphasis on representation and learning.
Geoffrey Hinton
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto. Works on neural networks and machine learning.
Robert Kowalski
Professor Emeritus, Department of Computing, Imperial College London. Father of Logic Programming.
Careers advice
The University of Edinburgh offers extensive advice on careers to its student community through the Careers Service. Many companies give careers presentations specially tailored to Informatics students.
Working in Scotland
Some graduates choose to remain in Scotland after their degree.
This article was published on Jan 10, 2012