The School of Computing's research reflects its traditional areas of expertise, such as visualisation and formal methods.

The Intelligent Virtual Environments Group explores new modes of user interaction based on artificial intelligence techniques. This work has applications in new media, computer games and simulation. It can also provide new experimental platforms, for instance for psychological research. In particular, the group has gained an international reputation for its research in interactive storytelling.

Over the past years, it has attracted nearly £1.5m in external funding and its members have published over 100 papers. The group is currently involved in two Framework 6 Integrated Projects in the field of multimodal interfaces.

Intelligent Virtual Environments Group website

The Formal Methods and Programming Research Group's activities span a wide range from theoretical aspects, including refinement and other semantic issues, to practical exploration of novel programming paradigms such as reversible imperative programming. The group is internationally recognised as a centre of expertise in the B method and its members have served regularly on relevant programme committees.

Amongst the group's most notable recent developments is an open-source prototype of a Forth Reversible Virtual Machine, downloadable from its web page. In 2006, the group organised the first international symposium on Unifying Theories of Programming, which attracted most of the world's leading figures in the field.

Formal Methods and Programming Research Group website

The School is also host to several other research groups which support teaching, practice, knowledge transfer and regional initiatives, in particular the Web Engineering Group and the Accessibility Research Centre.