Foundations of Computer Science are not redundant

Having worked in UK academia myself, I am not surprised this is happening. But this is a dangerous trend that must be stopped. Research and education cannot be dominated by a short-sighted perception of "market demand".

Full Professor University of Trento and Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy

A narrow-minded and flawed plan that - if implemented - will reflect very badly on the reputation of the University of Leicester.

Really sad that in 21th century the importance of FoCo is not yet understood, not even at Universities - how absurd. Andreas Karcher, Full Professor of Computer Science Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany

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Full Professor Head of the Department of Mathematics Faculty of Mathematics and Physics University of Ljubljana Slovenia

Chalmers University of Technology

This is absurd. It shows complete ignorance: without theory, we wouldn't have a single app, mobile phone, cloud service, no computer, no internet, no modern car, nothing of modern life ... Please rethink, this would be a disastrous decision for the U of Leicester. Zsuzsanna Lipták, Associate Professor, University of Verona, Italy

Constructing a program without theoretical CS is like building a structure without foundations. In the long run it can not stand. -- Amihood Amir Professor of Computer Science Bar Ilan University, Israel and Georgia Tech, USA

This is beyond belief. You cannot have applications without foundations. Mark Minas, Professor of Computer Science Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany

I am a Full Professor at the Computer Science Department of Sapienza University of Rome. I strongly support this petition.

University of Stuttgart, Germany

Killing the foundations of Computer Science to boost "digitalisation" is like selling your fishing boat to buy fish. That is particularly sad in this case, as Leicester has an internationally known and respected group of experts that are particularly successful. Sándor Fekete Full Professor of Computer Science, TU Braunschweig Chair of the Board of the Center for Digitalization, Informatics and Information Sciences 2011-2019

The fears people have regarding AI, around them making mistakes, failing when needed, doing things they shouldn't etc. are checked by the techniques and tools that are outputs from Computer Science foundations, not engineering. We cannot train good AI programmers/builders without that foundation.

Strategies of this type intrinsically lead to limiting the freedom of research and inevitably, in the medium to long term, to compromise the development of new ideas. How can the University of Leicester not be aware of this?

UKRI and the REF review must look carefully at this. The REF assessment is used to dictate research funding. If the University makes redundant half of the staff included on their REF return, this should affect proportionately their REF grade.

Ridicoulus decision. Blue sky research is important.

If there is one thing I learned during my journey into computer science, it's that foundations and applications are not at odds, they complement each other. The decision is short-sighted.

Università degli Studi - Milano (Retired)

Teaching and research staff in informatics at LMU Munich. I support this petition since I am convinced that strong foundational research and education is essential for the success of the strategically important applied disciplines.