In the recently released 2017 National Student Survey results, Warwick Computer Science ranked 2^nd of the 104 computing departments in the UK, with an overall student satisfaction rate of 96%. Among Russell Group competitor institutions (an elite group of teaching and research universities in the UK), Computer Science at Warwick is ranked 1^st for overall student satisfaction.

The National Student Survey (NSS) canvasses student satisfaction across all departments at all UK universities and remains the biggest survey of student satisfaction in the UK. Students are asked to respond on topics including teaching quality, learning opportunities, academic support, and organisation and management.

Among Russell Group institutions, Computer Science at Warwick ranked top in almost all major categories*:

• 1^st for overall student satisfaction
• 1^st for teaching quality
• 1^st for learning opportunities
• 1^st for assessment and feedback
• 1^st for academic support
• 1^st for learning resources
• 1^st for learning community
• 1^st for organisation and management

Throughout this summer investment continues in new teaching and laboratory facilities, with Warwick’s new interdisciplinary Mathematical Sciences building (for the Departments of Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics) opening in 2018.

*These figures are based on the Russell Group institutions for which there is publishable data for the subject of Computer Science in 2017.

Dr Ranko Lazic has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the 2017/18 academic year, to work on the Petri nets reachability conjecture.

Petri nets, also known as vector addition systems, are one of the most prominent models of concurrency, and their study is a vibrant research area. They have been used to discover bugs and eliminate vulnerabilities in network protocols, concurrent software, business processes, hardware circuits, and control systems.

Professor Artur Czumaj, head of the Foundations of Computer Science research group, has commented:

This prestigious fellowship will further strengthen the internationally leading research in theoretical computer science at Warwick, which recently has been also greatly boosted by the new permanent appointments of Dr Sayan Bhattacharya and Dr Dmitry Chistikov.

Professor Graham Cormode has been awarded the 2017 Adams Prize by the Cambridge Faculty of Mathematics. The award recognizes his work on "Statistical Analysis of Big Data", and is awarded jointly with Professor Richard Samworth of Cambridge. Professor Cormode says,

My work, in common with Prof Samworth's, is about finding mathematical representations of data that allow useful information to be extracted effectively and accurately. These techniques allow ever larger quantities of data to be handled on ordinary computers.

Professor Cormode's work on "data sketches" has been used in companies such as Netflix, Yahoo, Twitter, Google, AT&T and Sprint. He is currently leading Warwick's involvement in the Alan Turing Institute at London, and working on questions to do with verification of machine learning, and privacy.