Equality and diversity
The School of Computer Science is committed to creating an inclusive environment that supports equality and diversity. The School aims to achieve fair and equal representation for all, enabling all members of staff and students to contribute and reach their full potential. All staff operate under the University’s equality, diversity and inclusion policy.
School statistics
- In the 2024-2025 academic year, female students accounted for 30% of all students, with ratios of 27% among undergraduates, 37% in postgraduate taught (PGT), and 36% in postgraduate research (PGR).
- In the 2024-2025 academic year, the ratios of UK-domiciled ethnic minority students were 31%, with ratios of 32% among undergraduates, 38% in PGT, and 8% in PGR.
Recent successes
Athena Swan Silver Award
The School of Computer Science received exciting news: it has been granted the Athena Swan Silver award!
This achievement stands as a testament to the substantial dedication and effort invested by the School's members. This accomplishment is truly significant for the School, marking a commendable milestone in its journey.
Young Software Engineer of the Year Award 2026
Congratulations to Lily Martin, Winner of the Young Software Engineer Awards 2026!
Organised by ScotlandIS, the membership and cluster management organisation for Scotland’s digital technologies industry, the Young Software Engineer of the Year awards recognise outstanding final-year computer science and software engineering students from universities across Scotland. The 37th annual awards took place in Edinburgh on 24 September as part of ScotlandIS’ annual flagship conference, ScotSoft.
Lily’s winning project, ‘Extracting 3D Models of Animals from Wildlife Image’, nominated by the School of Computer Science, aims to improve the study of animal behaviour by reconstructing articulated 3D models from 2D wildlife images.
Lily’s win marks the second consecutive year a St Andrews student has taken the top award.
Young Software Engineer of the Year Award 2025
Ms Verity Powel won 2025 Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards.
Her final year project “Video Analytics For Rugby Skills Training” was nominated by the school in June.
The awards were announced at ScotSoft 2025, Scotland’s leading tech conference, at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
BCS Lovelace Colloquium 2026
Five of our students’ posts are accepted by BCS Lovelace Colloquium 2026 with Gemma Waston coming second in the second year category. A variety of topics are presented including (1) How much of the British Army’s next war will be digital?, by Poppy Brown, (2) Periods Tracked, by Gemma Watson, (3) Post-Quantun Cryptography – We have the algorithms, what next?, by Emma Morrison, (4) The Relationship Between Sustainability and Parallelism, by Morgan Hunt; and (5) The Future of Vibe Coding, by Sidney Ribli.
