Meet the Head of Department

What does the Computer Science Department do?

Our work ranges from classic computer science topics such as algorithms, databases, cryptography, and programming languages to data science and artificial intelligence. We also conduct research in the didactics of computer science.

We contribute to the IT University's multidisciplinary approach to IT by collaborating closely with the researchers of the other two departments, for example in areas such as sustainable transport and infrastructure, the human aspects of IT security, and privacy related data processing.What are your ambitions for the department?

We want to continue to grow; more research projects and faculty – and we want to expand the education programmes. Furthermore, I want us to keep being attractive for external grant agencies and foundations.

A very specific role for the department is to deliver technical courses to the other five education programmes outside our department.
Furthermore, we will continue to have joint projects with the two other departments, preserving the multi-disciplinarity of the IT University. 

What are your goals for the department?

The department has grown considerably since it was established in January 2017. Academically, the department has expanded with the addition of data science, including natural language processing, machine learning, and social network analysis.

We have gone from offering two educational programs to offering five, and for several years ours have been the two most popular university IT bachelor programs in Denmark. We have also increased the amount of external research funds secured for the department, and we have attracted many really talented new researchers, more than half from abroad.

In the coming years, we will focus on giving our new colleagues the opportunity to develop and establish themselves, and obtain external research funding. We must continue to attract excellent Danish and international PhD students and postdocs, and this requires a strong research profile and a good working environment.

How will you reach your goals?

Overall, we will strive to maintain a high academic level in both research and education. At the same time our activities should be of short- or long-term value to society.

With regard to our education programmes, there is still an unmet demand for graduates with strong technical IT skills, and I see it as one of our main tasks to meet some of that demand by educating talented graduates who can make a difference on the labour market.

In our research activities, we aim to maintain a balance between application-oriented research and basic research. We combine them whenever possible, but I think we need to have both types of research, because developing a good application often requires going back to fundamental principles.

Moreover, it is important that we maintain and continue to strengthen the strong social environment in the department. Among academics, it’s not a given that colleagues help and support each other, but at the Computer Science Department I think we have succeeded in creating a supportive and inclusive environment. We must protect this because it is to our mutual benefit. It allows us to inspire each other and collaborate across completely different fields of expertise.

Biography

Peter Sestoft is professor and head of the Computer Science Department at the IT University.

He holds an MSc (1988) and a PhD (1991) in Computer Science from the University of Copenhagen.

Peter Sestoft has previously worked at DTU (Technical University of Denmark) and at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (now part of the University of Copenhagen). He has conducted research abroad at AT&T Bell Labs, Microsoft Research Cambridge, and Harvard University.

In 1999, Peter Sestoft taught the IT University's very first programming course, and in 2007 he co-designed and headed the university’s first BSc programme in Software Development.

His research interests include development, description, and implementation of programming languages as well as functional, object-oriented, and parallel programming.

He is the author or co-author of six books published by international academic publishers.