Research degrees

Research topics

Informatics at Edinburgh offers the widest choice of research projects in informatics in the UK. The following list of topics is meant to serve as a source of ideas, and is neither exhaustive or complete. As an applicant you are welcome to propose a novel topic.

Research students are hosted within one of our seven research Institutes, and you will need to know to which Institute you are applying. Below is an overview of the main research areas associated with each Institute. Click through for some more specific suggested topics. Or:

Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications (CISA)

Knowledge representation and automated reasoning
Agent Systems and Planning
Software Systems

Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation (IANC)

Cognitive or Computational Neuroscience
Machine learning
Bioinformatics

Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC)

Computational approaches to language, communication, and cognition
Natural language processing and computational linguistics
Information extraction, retrieval and presentation
Educational and assistive technology

Institute for Computing Systems Architecture (ICSA)

Computing Architecture and Circuits
Optimisation and Parallel Programming
Networks and communications

Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour (IPAB)

Computer Vision and Graphics
Robotics

Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS)

Theory and foundations of computer science
Formal models and methods for design, verification, and performance analysis
Database theory and practice
Algorithms and computational complexity theory
Logic, semantics, and programming languages

Informatics Life-Sciences Institute (ILSI)

Research at the informatics/life sciences interface
Computational systems biology
Synthetic biology
Bioinformatics

Suggested topics

See also topics under IANC and IPAB

Institute web site