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| Informatics Forum | |
|---|---|
| Name | Informatics Forum |
| Location | George Square, Edinburgh |
| Architect | Bennetts Associates |
| Completed | 2008 |
| Owner | University of Edinburgh |
| Style | Contemporary |
Informatics Forum The Informatics Forum is a central building at the University of Edinburgh housing a cluster of research groups, departments, and centres focused on computing and information science. It serves as a hub linking scholars across computer science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, robotics, systems biology, and digital humanities. The Forum provides shared laboratories, lecture theatres, and collaborative spaces that support connections with industrial partners, funding councils, and international research networks.
The Forum was developed during a period of expansion for the University of Edinburgh’s informatics activities that involved stakeholders including the University Court, Scottish Executive, Higher Education Funding Council for England, and philanthropic donors such as the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society. Planning consultations referenced precedents like the Alan Turing Building at University of Manchester, the Computer History Museum, and the redevelopment at King's College London. Construction engaged architectural firms and contractors previously involved with projects at Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The opening followed major milestones in computing such as the awarding of the Turing Award to alumni and faculty, linkages with grants from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and collaborations with research councils including the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council.
Designed by Bennetts Associates with landscape inputs akin to projects at Zaha Hadid Architects and Foster and Partners, the building incorporates flexible wet and dry laboratories, shared atria, seminar rooms, and a large central social stair like examples at Stanford University and ETH Zurich. Facilities parallel those found in research centres such as Microsoft Research Cambridge, Google DeepMind, and the Max Planck Society institutes, enabling access for collaborations with industrial partners like IBM Research, Intel Labs, Facebook AI Research, and Amazon Web Services. The Forum’s audiovisual and computing infrastructure supports high-performance computing initiatives similar to resources at National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Argonne National Laboratory, and connects to networks including JANET, GEANT, and partnerships with Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre. Building awards and architectural recognition mirror accolades received by projects at Royal College of Art and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
The Forum hosts groups associated with departments and centres that echo strengths at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and California Institute of Technology. Research themes span artificial intelligence linked to labs at MIT CSAIL, Berkeley AI Research, and Princeton University; natural language processing with connections to Stanford NLP Group and University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics collaborators; computer vision paralleling teams at Oxford Vision and ETH Zurich Computer Vision Lab; robotics with ties to Imperial College Robotics and University of Tokyo; and computational biology related to Wellcome Sanger Institute and EMBL-EBI. Institutes within the Forum engage with funding agencies and consortia such as Horizon 2020, ERC, BBSRC, and industry partnerships with Siemens, NVIDIA, ARM, and BT.
Teaching programmes mapped to the Forum align with curricula similar to those at MIT, Stanford University, Princeton University, and University of California, Berkeley, offering undergraduate and postgraduate pathways that prepare students for careers at organisations including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, DeepMind, Goldman Sachs, and Bloomberg L.P.. Coursework incorporates practical modules reflecting collaborations with Cisco Systems, Oracle Corporation, and SAP SE, and methods influenced by pedagogical research from Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania. Graduate supervision has produced alumni who joined faculties at University of Toronto, National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University, and research labs at Facebook and Apple Inc..
Faculty, visiting scholars, and alumni associated with the Forum have links to prize winners and institutions such as the Turing Award, Royal Society, Academia Europaea, and universities including Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and University of Chicago. Collaborators include researchers previously affiliated with Alan Turing Institute, Sanger Institute, European Bioinformatics Institute, Max Planck Institutes, and corporate research groups at Google Research, Microsoft Research, and IBM Watson. Visiting chairs, honorary fellows, and alumni have held positions at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, EPFL, and national academies such as the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
The Forum hosts seminars, colloquia, and conferences similar in scope to events at NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, CHI, CVPR, and public engagement activities paralleling those of the Royal Society, British Science Association, and Edinburgh Festivals. Outreach partnerships connect with local institutions like National Library of Scotland, Scottish Government, Edinburgh Napier University, and cultural organisations including National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal Lyceum Theatre. Industry showcases and spinout incubation reflect models from Cambridge Enterprise, Oxford University Innovation, and innovation hubs such as Tech Nation and Silicon Valley accelerators, while public lectures have featured contributors from organisations including BBC, The Guardian, and major international research consortia.
Category:University of Edinburgh buildings