About us

We are a leading research institute for computational approaches to language (spoken and written), cognition and communication.

Research areas

The Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC) is dedicated to the pursuit of basic and applied research on computational approaches to language, communication, and cognition.  Primary research areas include the following.

Interdisciplinary connections

ILCC is part of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. However, much of the research in ILCC is interdisciplinary in nature, and we maintain strong ties to several other departments in Edinburgh, primarily within the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences.  Members of ILCC are involved the cross-college Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR) and many ILCC faculty are affiliated with the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Natural Language Processing.

UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Natural Language Processing

Related departments and research centres:

Computing facilities

In ILCC we have access to a range of different computing facilities run by the University, the School of Informatics, and individual researchers.

  • Edinburgh Compute and Data Facilities include a large, managed cluster of more than 1,500 cores for computationally demanding research, along with dedicated storage services for large data sets.
  • Informatics Computing Facilities are used by many members of ILCC for everyday computing needs.
  • Some research groups also have their own dedicated computing facilities. 

Laboratory facilities

ILCC is located in the Informatics Forum, completed in 2008 as the new unified research home of the School of Informatics.  The Informatics Forum houses a suite of state of the art laboratories for data collection and behavioral experiments. These labs are run jointly with the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences and include:

  • The sound studio suite, which provides four highly configurable recording areas that can be used independently or in combination with each other to perform general audio recording, audio recording in hemi-anechoic conditions, or audio recording in conjunction with eye-tracking or electromagnetic articulography.
  • The perception lab suite, which provides two sets of four isolation booths for perception experiments, including facilities for reaction time measurements and audio presentation and recording.
  • The joint eyetracking lab, housed within the sound studios, which contains two head-mounted eye-trackers which can be used individually for reading or perception experiments, or jointly for studying dialogue, interaction, and collaboration.
  • The shape capture suite, which comprises of a high resolution static shape capture system.
  • The instrumented meeting room, which is an informatics facility designed to accommodate the recording of multi-party meetings, using multiple audio and video channels as well as data projector, hand writing, and whiteboard capture.

More information can be found on the School of Informatics lab facilities web page.