The Department of Computer Science (DCS) was established in early 1991 in the Faculty of Science, University of Jaffna, introducing Computer Science as a subject for the Physical Science students. In 2007, the DCS commenced a new degree programme named as Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science (BSc in Computer Science) for the students who are directly admitted by the UGC under the Computer Science (Direct-intake) stream. In 2015, an extended fourth year Applied Science degree in Computing was introduced for the Physical Science students who could not get in to the special degree programme in Computer Science.

The DCS contributes at its best to the development of higher education of the nation. The Computer Science study programmes at the DCS have good track records for more than two decades for their curricula and the quality graduates they produce. The undergraduate student population of the DCS in year 2018 was about 325 including four foreign students from Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and the postgraduate student population was seven. The population comprises all three ethnic groups: Sinhalese (45%), Tamils (46%) and Muslims (9%). The DCS receives the services of 10 permanent academic staff, two permanent academic support staff, and four non-academic staff. The department maintains a good industry linkage with leading IT companies such as WSO2, Virtusa, 99X Technology, IFS, and hSenid Mobile Solutions in teaching and learning processes since year 2011.

Academic staff of the Department drafted the syllabi for the above three degree programmes, which have been regularly revised as per ACM/IEEE guidelines in order to cater the changing needs of the contemporary world, in consultation with experts from reputed universities and IT industries.

At present the DCS is housed in a portion of the Mathematics Block. This year DCS has commenced the construction work of its first permanent new building and other related structures through the World Bank funded AHEAD project. The construction work is awarded to M/S Sanken Constructions. At present, the lack of space is a major cause for restricting the number of students admitting to offer computer science as a subject. There is a need to increase the intake into such a demanded subject stream. On a positive side, the increase in intake of students will increase the number of qualified graduates satisfying the national and global demands. We expect to occupy the new building in the mid of year 2021.

The students in Computer Science show enthusiasm in studying with good knowledge having balanced socio-emotional skills. It becomes evident when they do projects the existing curriculum of DCS insists the students to carry out developing a software system as a group of three to four students in order to practise as an effective player in a team. This group project also provides knowledge, skills and attitude to expel teamwork and leadership together with creativity and problem solving abilities. In addition to the group project, each honours degree student shall carry out an individual research project where their effective usage of information and management skills is enhanced. In addition, students perform various oral presentations when they present their projects, present their poster at Sri Lanka Student Workshop on Computer Science (SL-SWCS), present their app at software hackathons, present a research paper on image processing applications (PIPA), and when they share 5-minutes news on new advances in hardware and software during the lecture hours. This improves the students’ communication skills and professionalism. Moreover, with the support of the academic staff-students do publish full papers at International conferences including IEEE conferences based on their final year research projects in which their networking and social skills are improved. Furthermore, students perform several activities through the Computer Society (CompSoc) of the DCS such as releasing a technical newsletter named as “Kananiyam” once a year, conducting seminars to recap ICT subjects and past examination papers to those students who prepare to sit for the G.C.E. (O/L) and G.C.E. (A/L) and organising cultural activities. In year 2017, the graduate employability was 88% and it increased to 91% in 2018. We believe this increase occurred because of various events such as CS-Career Fair’17 & CS-Career Fair’18, UoJHack’17, UoJCoders v1.0 and SL-SWCS’17 conducted by the DCS in addition to its well-developed curriculum.