Копенгаген Университетінің Компьютер Ғылымы Кафедрасы

Department at University of Copenhagen

The UCPH Department of Computer Science (Datalogisk Institut, DIKU) is a department in the Faculty of Science at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). It is the longest established department of Computer Science in Denmark and was founded in 1970 by Turing Award winner Peter Naur. As of 2021, it employs 82 academic staff, 126 research staff and 38 support staff. It is consistently ranked the top Computer Science department in the Nordic countries, and in 2017 was placed 9th worldwide by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

DIKU has its roots at the Institute for Mathematical Sciences, where in 1963, the first computer was bought. In 1969, Peter Naur became the first professor in Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1970, DIKU was officially established its own department.

DIKU is based at University Park in Copenhagen, part of the university's North Campus. Its building complex comprises the former Department of Anatomy. The building was completed in 1942 to design by Kaj Gottlob. The Human Centered Computing Section is located in Sigurdsgade, close to the North Campus.

An important social event is the DIKU revue which is held each year in June. The DIKU revue is always in competition with the physics revue and never misses an opportunity to computer animate the complete and utter destruction of the physics institute at the H. C. Ørsted Institute. As something unique among the institutes of Copenhagen University, the DIKU cantine is entirely student driven and open 24 hours. It is the natural hub for all social events on DIKU. The two largest social events are the DIKU revue and the Julefrokost (Christmas lunch) of the canteen.

Corinna Cortes, who co developed the highly influential supervised machine learning method support vector machines, has been an adjunct professor at the department since 2011. Mikkel Thorup, best known for his work on shortest path problem in undirected graphs, has been a professor at the department since 2013. Kasper Hornbæk, who won a SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on usability in human computer interaction, has been a professor at the department since 2014. Serge Belongie, known for his work on object recognition and image segmentation, has been a professor at the department since 2021. Isabelle, known for her research on natural language processing, and for being appointed the youngest female full professor in Denmark in October 2022.

Peter Naur, a Turing Award recipient, was a professor at the department between 1969 and 1998. Per Brinch Hansen, a IEEE Computer Pioneer Award winner, was a professor at the department between 1984 and 1987. Mads Tofte, the first managing director of the IT University of Copenhagen and co developer of the Standard ML programming language, who graduated with a MSc in Computer Science and Mathematics in 1984. Michael Seifert, a Danish computer programmer who developed the popular multiplayer text based role playing game DikuMud, was a BSc then MSc student at the department from 1990 to 1996.

The domain diku. dk was registered on October 29, 1987, and was one of the first dk domain names to be registered. The popular DikuMUD codebase was developed at DIKU in March 1990, and derives its name from the institute. In the 1994 Danish thriller Nattevagten (Nightwatch) directed by Ole Bornedal, the main entrance and stairwell of the institute was used as a main location.