Bachelor's degree programme in Computer Science - Introduction
People, innovation, design and programming
You used computers in your school and extra-curricular activities, you send e-mails, use Google to find information on the Internet, click on the Krak web site for route maps in Denmark, shop online to download MP3 music, keep in touch with family and friends via your mobile phone – in short, you are familiar with information technology (IT) from your everyday life.
If:
- you are curious to know how computers are used to transfer money, manage online shopping, locate web sites and steer driverless trains
- you can become completely absorbed in a new drawing program or descriptions of how computers steer the rovers on Mars
- you are convinced – when using a text processing system – that you could make a better one
- you toy with the idea of developing the next generation of iPod, Google or Skype
- you would like to design IT for future homes, schools or hospitals
- you have experimented with programming and would like to learn it properly
... then a degree in computer science is possibly just what you are looking for.
Computer science is about getting computers to solve different tasks, such as automatic spell checks and hyphenation when you are editing texts, using the Rejseplanen.dk web site to find the shortest way to a destination or finding links to web sites that contain the Danish word Samsø. In the computer science degree programme, you learn how to program computers to solve tasks. You also learn to assess whether or not a task can be handled by a computer at all.
Computer science is not just about considering how to solve problems and then programming the solutions. Computer science is also about knowing and meeting the people you design IT solutions for. You must know how they think and cooperate, so that you can create IT systems that are not only functional and effective, but that also make everyday situations easier and better. When developing IT systems, you work with colleagues from other disciplines, such as humanists, engineers and commerce graduates.
The Department of Computer Science is located in the IT City Katrinebjerg, where the University of Aarhus has consolidated all its degree programmes and research in IT. Katrinebjerg has an exciting study environment and is the largest IT education centre in Denmark, with 1,800 students and more than 200 researchers.
Approximately 100 students enrol in computer science every year.
Gender distribution:
About 3–5% of every new intake of computer science students is women, and 12% of graduates are women. This discrepancy is due to a large number of female students transferring to computer science from other subjects, such as mathematics. Approximately half of all IT students at Katrinebjerg are women.
Research
The research environment at the Department of Computer Science is internationally renowned. We educate far more PhD students of computer science than any other Danish institution. Approximately 10% of students from a particular year group continue to study for a PhD.
What can theory be used for?
Computer science research comprises both theoretical considerations and practical experiments. Theoretical considerations lead to mathematical descriptions of the time and space requirements of an algorithm, mathematical proof of the security level of an encryption method or statistical models for the capacity of a network protocol. Theoretical considerations can also lead to the definition of concepts used for general descriptions of the way people use computer technology based on individual examples, for descriptions of programming methods and methodologies aimed at getting users involved in the development of IT systems.