Undergraduate computing facilities in the School include over 470 desktop machines running both Solaris and Windows NT and 150 special purpose educational computers designed by the School. In addition there is a range of specialist hardware, video and other special purpose equipment. Demand for places on the full-time undergraduate programme in computing run by the School is by far the highest in Ireland, and the graduates enjoy an excellent reputation. In addition to our own computing degrees and the shared programmes in Computational Linguistics, Mathematical Sciences and Electronic Commerce, the School provides a teaching input into some of the other degree programmes run by the University. Further details on our teaching activities can be found in the Faculty booklet and on the School website.
Research is seen as an important component of the work of academic staff and is supported strongly.
Many of our staff are in receipt of outside funding from Enterprise Ireland, the National Software Directorate, various programmes within the EU, and from industry. Research funding in Ireland as a whole and also within the University has been transformed over the last couple of years as the importance of research to the national interest has been realised. While always competitive and based on high standards, the number of new research programmes and initiatives to which the computing researcher can seek support is helping to foster a new emphasis and importance on research and this is reflected within the School of Computer Applications. The breadth of research interests from Faculty reflects the diverse and wide-ranging nature of our discipline and ranges from formal and theoretical aspects of computer science through to the enabling technologies underpinning the discipline, and on into applications of computing. There are currently approximately 50 research students in the School supported by outside funding or through the resources of the School.