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Computer Science

Welcome to the Computer Science page at King's! Here you will find an overview of Computer Science, the people who teach and research in Computer Science at King’s, plus information about making an application.

Computer Science at Cambridge

Computer Science in Cambridge has always been practised as an engineering discipline as well as being founded in mathematics. A team led by Maurice Wilkes designed and built one of the earliest digital computers, EDSAC, in the late 1940s. This tradition was continued with the appointment of the first established Professor of Computer Science. Robin Milner (King's, 1954), a world leader in the theory and practice of computing, was in 1991 awarded the prestigious ACM Turing Award for his work on the theory of communicating processes, together with the design of the successful programming language ML. This language is used in a number of universities (including Cambridge) to introduce students to the principles of program and data structure design: the language is functional, and its syntax and semantics lend themselves to proofs of correctness.

The Computer Science undergraduate course lasts three years. Full details of the course and options are available on the faculty admissions website and you may like to see details of how you are taught.

Computer Science at King's

King's has a long tradition in Computer Science, indeed one of the seminal papers of modern computing theory was published by Alan Turing (King's 1931) in 1937. Former students of King's now occupy senior posts in academic Computer Science throughout the world, as well as positions of influence in the computer industry.

The College has a well-equipped 24/7 Computer Room (the Turing Room on E staircase in the Gibbs Building), with a variety of networked computers and workstations. College rooms have high-speed internet connections and there is wi-fi accessible to College members in public areas such as the bar and coffee shop. The college library is available 24/7, is well stocked for Computer Science, and provides many pleasant spaces to work as well as a second small computer room (see the virtual tour). The King's Archive Centre holds a collection of Turing's personal papers.

King's is a central College on the river. Most first year Computer Science lectures take place right by King's, on the New Museums Site (see the red marker on this map). Second and third year Faculty teaching is in the Computer Laboratory on the west side of Cambridge. This is an eight-minute cycle ride away from King's (see map).

King's Fellows in Computer Science

Felix Fischer

Felix Fischer is a member of the Statistical Laboratory. He is interested in game theory, social choice theory, and mechanism design, including their computational aspects and application to computational systems.

Ken Moody

Ken Moody supervises mainly on probability and databases. His research interests include distributed database systems, information retrieval, active applications and access control.

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Simone Teufel (Director of Studies) is interested in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR). Her current work concentrates on generation techniques for robust summarisation, and on task-based experiments of human text processing. She has also worked on multilingual summarisation and medical information extraction.

Applying to study Computer Science at King's

King's welcomes applications for both the Computer Science Tripos and Computer Science with Mathematics. Computer Scientists studying at King's come from all kinds of schools and we accept a range of qualifications from countries around the world. Our most common standard offers are listed on the entrance requirements page. Women are underrepresented in university Computer Science courses. We therefore actively encourage applications from women to study Computer Science at King's.

It is essential to be studying for an A level or equivalent in Mathematics: candidates who can take Further Mathematics as well should do so (though we recognise that not all schools offer it) and Physics is also preferred though not essential. Chemistry can be useful. Familiarity with computers is a great help, but no real advantage is gained by following an A-level or equivalent Computing course, and we don't require any prior knowledge of programming. Further advice is available in our Subject Matters leaflet and on the Computer Lab website.

The application process is explained in detail on our how to apply page, which we advise you to read thoroughly. Candidates invited for interviews in Computer Science normally sit the Thinking Skills Assessment (TSA) (for which no specific preparation is required) and have two interviews.

If you would like to apply for Computer Science with Mathematics, you must apply for Computer Science on the UCAS form. On the SAQ (or the COPA, if you are an overseas student), you will be asked to enter your option preferences. That is where you choose 'Computer Science with Mathematics'. Candidates for Computer Science with Mathematics sit a one hour Mathematics written test when they attend for their interview. This test is in addition to the TSA and two interviews. No specific preparation is required for the Mathematics test.

King's usually makes about 4 offers in Computer Science each year though this number is not fixed.

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Subjects | Undergraduate study