Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Computer Science in Lund dissappears

I should have written this post a long time ago but for some reason I was hoping the decision would change.

I did my undergrad and PhD at the computer science department at Lund University in Sweden. Sadly it seems as the department will be closed down. The decision (Swedish) was taken by the faculty board in November 2007. As far as I can tell the decision was taken purely on a financial basis (even though the department is tiny compared the departments of biology, chemistry and physics).

The research at the department focused on algorithmics and AI and the small algorithms group was headed by Andrzej Lingas. The group, that among others also includes Thore Husfeldt and my former supervisor Christos Levcopoulos, has always been very active and produced high quality research and PhDs. When I was a PhD student there was a rather big group of successful students, for example, Andreas Björklund, Anna Pagh, Jesper Jansson, Mikael Hammar and Jesper Larsson.

From next year there will be no Computer Science education in Lund (however, there will still be a computer engineering program at the faculty of engineering). As far as I know it is unique for a large university. It will be very sad not to be able to visit my old department when I go back to Sweden.

4 comments:

  1. This is a sad discrimination to computer science...

    It's also a bad decision as the CS department of Lund University is famous to the world. The university definitely will lose something that cannot be compensated by money!

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  2. Det är verkligen synd... I also spent the Erasmus year 2003/04 in Lund and enjoyed the CS courses at the NatFak. "Are there any NatFak-ers here?"

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  3. Also shows that the university is run by a bunch of idiots and anyone thinking of joining the university in any capacity should think a few times over.

    CS is one of THE most important departments today in any university. I am guessing if the advent of cheap machines and good Asian-CS students has forced some universities to think that they should just not compete? But in that case, it would be easier to close down the university itself.

    I'm sure those who took part in the decision making, will never find a job anywhere else in the world...

    This is not sad, this is the beginning of the end...of Lund.

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