Ian Watson

Professor
Room number: IT-413
email: iwatson@cs.man.ac.uk
Tel.: +44 161 275 6247
Other contact details

I am Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. I am a member of the DELTA and UFO research groups.

Research Interests

My major research interest is in Parallel Computer Systems with particular emphasis on achieving high performance from parallel systems with minimal effort. This implies programming styles which avoid explicit statements concerning parallelism wherever possible. This includes parallel implementations of declarative languages but not to the exclusion of more pragmatic approaches. My expertise is really in machine architecture and run-time systems (for example dynamic load balancing) rather than language design and implementation, although I am convinced that a wide knowledge ranging from programming models through to hardware design is necessary to make progress in the area.

Teaching

I currently teach a Computer Science MSc module, CS510 on Programming in C. I tutor first year groups on basic computer architecture, C programming and ML programming and second year groups on Algorithms.

Recreational Interests

My major sport, at present is Orienteering. Some information on that can be found by following the links from here.

I still play the occasional game of squash and would be interested in an occasional game with someone in the Department of similar standard. I used to play NW league (Division 4 at my peak - but that was some time ago - and when Division 4 was weaker than it is now!).