A brief history of the CS department and its mission

École Normale Supérieure (ENS) is France’s most prestigious “Grande Ecole”. This means that its core students are admitted through a national entrance exam, as tough as any in this world. Once admitted, the core students (French and foreign) become “fonctionnaires stagiaires”, and their salary is paid by the state for the duration of their studies.

The mathematics department at ENS has a long tradition for excellence, going back to Évariste Galois. In 1986, it changed its name to DMI (département de mathématiques et informatique). The DI (département d’informatique) became autonomous in 1999, with a mission from the head of ENS: to double, both in size and international reputation. Thanks to unwavering support from ENS, CNRS and INRIA, the DI had reached its numerical goal by 2009 (100 full-time researchers, 35 permanent). The research component of DI is LIENS (laboratoire d’informatique de l’ENS). LIENS was rated A+ (top grade) in 2009 by its visiting committee from AERES: “ABSTRACTION, CASCADE, TREC, WILLOW and ODYSSEE are among the top groups in computer science in the world in their respective research areas”. Since then, two new research groups (SIERRA, PARKAS) have been added, and five of LIENS members (Bach, Faugeras, Ponce, Regev, Zisserman) enjoy prestigious ERC grants. In 2011, ENS ranks 32 in the QS World University Rankings for Computer Science.

The DI mission is to train its students by engaging in world class research. Over three quarters of our alumni hold a PhD in Computer Science. Over 200 ENS alumni in Computer Science from ENS now hold key positions in academia, industry (from smallest to largest), and state institutions, in France and abroad. The next challenge for DI is to double its current student population, from France and abroad, whilst raising admission criteria at the same time.

 
Webmaster: webdi[@]di[.]ens[.]fr.