Research at the IT University covers a wide variety of IT related subjects. The IT University considers IT to be a scientific field spanning both science, liberal arts and business, and the researchers have very varying academic backgrounds. From sociology to computer science, from philosophy to mathematics, from comparative literature studies to engineering. The research is under one faculty, and organized into seven groups:
The faculty group ‘Digital Culture and Mobile Communication’ specialises in mobile communication and online media. Today we all use a wide variety of digital media in our daily lives. We use them for social and practical purposes, and we use them to express ourselves to the world.
The faculty group studies the social, political and cultural dynamics of the digital world. Digital and mobile media have created brand new opportunities, risks and forms of storytelling that invite sociological, anthropological and humanistic studies. And the development of new services.
The research themes include cyber bullying, the narratology of Facebook status updates, the use of social media in disaster scenarios, teenagers’ use of cell phones and the possibilities of digital literature.
The perspective is international and the faculty group is concerned with the interplay between local and global phenomena.
Visit the group’s own website:
http://itudcmc.wordpress.com/
Backgammon is 5,000 years old. Chess was invented around the year 600. And as early as 3,000 B.C., the Egyptians were playing Mehen. At all times, in all cultures, man has played games. Man uses games to develop and learn new skills – and computer games are no exception.
Center for Computer Games Research is Denmark’s only scientific center for computer games research. Researchers have backgrounds in liberal arts, computer science and sociology, and they approach games from their respective angles. Theoretical game analysis, game aesthetics, ethnographic studies of game communities, game design theory, artificial intelligence and game experience are all subjects that the faculty group deals with.
Researchers from the faculty group are also concerned with so-called ‘serious games’: How computer games can be used for education, rehabilitation, medical purposes and many other important purposes.
Visit the group’s own website:
Game.itu.dk
The anthropological approach can be used not only to study the interaction between people, but also between people and technology.
The faculty group ‘Technologies in Practice’ conducts qualitative studies of the technologically mediated practices in the everyday lives of organisations and people. Through thorough empirical studies, researchers seek answers to how people, organisations and technologies affect each other. And they study the challenges and opportunities provided by the globalised high-tech society.
The group is particularly inspired by the STS (‘science and technology studies’) and CSCW (‘computer supported cooperative work’) research traditions. The focus is on the interaction between cultures, organisations, people and technologies.
One area where this interaction is particularly important is the health care sector. A big research topic with the group is therefore the implementation and use of IT in the public health services. How do you standardise practices with public health services players? Can IT improve patient safety?
In addition to health care IT, researchers engage in research projects on global interaction, technologically mediated cooperation and global information structures. How does information travel through different media and information structures and how does the information change along the way?
Visit the group's website:
TiP.itu.dk
The faculty group ‘Innovative Communication’ is known for its groundbreaking research into gaze tracking: How to measure the movements of the human eye and the direction of gaze. The Innovative Communication group wants to make gaze tracking technology cheap and accessible to the general public, and the perspectives are far-reaching. The research is already helping people with severe motor disabilities who can control computers via eye gaze and use communication programs to communicate and interact with the world.
However, gaze tracking is only one example of the ‘assistive technologies’ that the group is researching. The welfare of the future depends on technology and IT, and the researchers are also concerned with how IT can provide the elderly with a better quality of life. With the proper technology, elderly people can stay longer in their own homes, and new communication platforms can prevent loneliness. The approach is interaction design, or ‘research through design’: The ideas are put into practice and the user is included in the process.
The Innovative Communication group is also behing the Spopos project: A successful indoor tracking system used by the Copenhagen Airport.
Visit the group’s own website:
http://www.itu.dk/research/inc/
The faculty group ‘Efficient Computation’ researches how to produce software that uses the computer’s resources efficiently. The researchers’ backgrounds include theoretical computer science, mathematics and data management. One of the primary research areas is algorithms – in popular terms: computational procedures. Algorithm research has paved the way for revolutionary innovations such as the quick route planning of the GPS and Google’s search engine. Algorithmics is also an important ‘auxiliary science’ to other academic fields. Modern research is built on staggering amounts of data. The essential issue for many biologists, oceanographers and geographers is no longer whether they have enough data, but whether the results can even be calculated. Only with clever algorithms can scientists extract meaning from the data. In that sense an ‘algorithmic lense’ has been inserted between scientists and their area of research, and algorithmics will become ever more important in future.
The group also researches sensor networks and data handling: How do you produce the tools needed by researchers to collect, handle and organise their data? Efficiency is the common thread that runs through all the group’s activities. Particularly the aspect of energy efficiency has become important. On a global scale, the computer industry is responsible for the same amount of CO2 emissions as the aviation industry, and to an increasing extent we use IT that runs on batteries or solar energy, so there is every reason to consider methods of reducing energy consumption.
Visit the group’s own website here:
https://wiki.itu.dk/research/efficient/
The Software Development faculty group does research into software development in a wide sense. The researchers’ goal is to create better and more advanced software, as well as improved software development methods.
The research themes address a wide range of current issues and challenges, such as:
- Health care IT: Electronic health records, sensors for the monitoring of bipolar patients, etc.
- Ubiquitous/pervasive computing: The interaction between computer and user does not take place at a desk with a screen and a keyboard. Rather, software and services are integrated in everyday objects and activities, and the user does not necessarily notice the interaction taking place.
- Organising the stacking of containers on ships to minimise waste of time and environmental impact
- Computer based voting/e-voting and setting out specifications for public IT projects.
- Cloud computing: Data are stored on servers instead of locally with the user, and software and services are provided via the Internet instead of the local computer.
The research is motivated by specific, practical problems and is carried out in cooperation with industrial partners. Collaboration partners include KMD, Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen, Danske Bank, A.P. Møller-Mærsk, Edlund A/S, CLC Bio A/S and DHI Water and Environment. The group also cooperates with the Danish public sector, including hospitals. In addition, the group is involved in the development of standard contracts on IT acquisitions, typically between public purchasers and suppliers of software or other IT services.
Visit the group’s own website here:
http://www.itu.dk/research/sdg/doku.php
The Programming, Logic and Semantics faculty group is concerned with the foundation of programming languages. Where the Software Development Group focuses on specific programs and languages, the work of the Programming, Logic and Semantics group is focused on fundamental research in computer science.
However, this fundamental research has several very specific applications. With backgrounds in computer science, mathematics and philosophy, the group’s researchers have taken on one of the greatest challenges in computer science: They want to ensure that the software of the future is not riddled with errors. Software errors cost Denmark billions of kroner every year and can have serious consequences. Only five per cent of all software is found in a computer. The rest is found in everything from medical equipment to space rockets. All this software consists of complicated codes that we rely heavily on in our daily lives and which must not fail. Therefore, the researchers are working to eliminate and minimise errors in codes when advanced computer programs are created.
The group is focused on supplying stronger guarantees of programs working as intended from the start. The researchers want to develop ‘evidence’ that a program will perform exactly as it is designed to.
Among other research themes are ‘workflow management’ and process-oriented IT, domain-specific languages and tools for uncovering ambivalence in programming languages. Research is also conducted on ‘logical frameworks’: Computer systems that can reason with mathematical logic. These systems can also be used in connection with another of the group’s research themes: Electronic elections.
Visit the group’s own website here:
http://www.itu.dk/research/pls/wiki/index.php/Main_Page