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100 Great Computer Science Research Topics Ideas for 2023

Computer science research paper topics

Being a computer student in 2023 is not easy. Besides studying a constantly evolving subject, you have to come up with great computer science research topics at some point in your academic life. If you’re reading this article, you’re among many other students that have also come to this realization.

Interesting Computer Science Topics

Awesome research topics in computer science, hot topics in computer science, topics to publish a journal on computer science.

  • Controversial Topics in Computer Science

Fun AP Computer Science Topics

Exciting computer science ph.d. topics, remarkable computer science research topics for undergraduates, incredible final year computer science project topics, advanced computer science topics, unique seminars topics for computer science, exceptional computer science masters thesis topics, outstanding computer science presentation topics.

  • Key Computer Science Essay Topics

Main Project Topics for Computer Science

  • We Can Help You with Computer Science Topics

Whether you’re earnestly searching for a topic or stumbled onto this article by accident, there is no doubt that every student needs excellent computer science-related topics for their paper. A good topic will not only give your essay or research a good direction but will also make it easy to come up with supporting points. Your topic should show all your strengths as well.

Fortunately, this article is for every student that finds it hard to generate a suitable computer science topic. The following 100+ topics will help give you some inspiration when creating your topics. Let’s get into it.

One of the best ways of making your research paper interesting is by coming up with relevant topics in computer science . Here are some topics that will make your paper immersive:

  • Evolution of virtual reality
  • What is green cloud computing
  • Ways of creating a Hopefield neural network in C++
  • Developments in graphic systems in computers
  • The five principal fields in robotics
  • Developments and applications of nanotechnology
  • Differences between computer science and applied computing

Your next research topic in computer science shouldn’t be tough to find once you’ve read this section. If you’re looking for simple final year project topics in computer science, you can find some below.

  • Applications of the blockchain technology in the banking industry
  • Computational thinking and how it influences science
  • Ways of terminating phishing
  • Uses of artificial intelligence in cyber security
  • Define the concepts of a smart city
  • Applications of the Internet of Things
  • Discuss the applications of the face detection application

Whenever a topic is described as “hot,” it means that it is a trendy topic in computer science. If computer science project topics for your final years are what you’re looking for, have a look at some below:

  • Applications of the Metaverse in the world today
  • Discuss the challenges of machine learning
  • Advantages of artificial intelligence
  • Applications of nanotechnology in the paints industry
  • What is quantum computing?
  • Discuss the languages of parallel computing
  • What are the applications of computer-assisted studies?

Perhaps you’d like to write a paper that will get published in a journal. If you’re searching for the best project topics for computer science students that will stand out in a journal, check below:

  • Developments in human-computer interaction
  • Applications of computer science in medicine
  • Developments in artificial intelligence in image processing
  • Discuss cryptography and its applications
  • Discuss methods of ransomware prevention
  • Applications of Big Data in the banking industry
  • Challenges of cloud storage services in 2023

 Controversial Topics in Computer Science

Some of the best computer science final year project topics are those that elicit debates or require you to take a stand. You can find such topics listed below for your inspiration:

  • Can robots be too intelligent?
  • Should the dark web be shut down?
  • Should your data be sold to corporations?
  • Will robots completely replace the human workforce one day?
  • How safe is the Metaverse for children?
  • Will artificial intelligence replace actors in Hollywood?
  • Are social media platforms safe anymore?

Are you a computer science student looking for AP topics? You’re in luck because the following final year project topics for computer science are suitable for you.

  • Standard browser core with CSS support
  • Applications of the Gaussian method in C++ development in integrating functions
  • Vital conditions of reducing risk through the Newton method
  • How to reinforce machine learning algorithms.
  • How do artificial neural networks function?
  • Discuss the advancements in computer languages in machine learning
  • Use of artificial intelligence in automated cars

When studying to get your doctorate in computer science, you need clear and relevant topics that generate the reader’s interest. Here are some Ph.D. topics in computer science you might consider:

  • Developments in information technology
  • Is machine learning detrimental to the human workforce?
  • How to write an algorithm for deep learning
  • What is the future of 5G in wireless networks
  • Statistical data in Maths modules in Python
  • Data retention automation from a website using API
  • Application of modern programming languages

Looking for computer science topics for research is not easy for an undergraduate. Fortunately, these computer science project topics should make your research paper easy:

  • Ways of using artificial intelligence in real estate
  • Discuss reinforcement learning and its applications
  • Uses of Big Data in science and medicine
  • How to sort algorithms using Haskell
  • How to create 3D configurations for a website
  • Using inverse interpolation to solve non-linear equations
  • Explain the similarities between the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence

Your dissertation paper is one of the most crucial papers you’ll ever do in your final year. That’s why selecting the best ethics in computer science topics is a crucial part of your paper. Here are some project topics for the computer science final year.

  • How to incorporate numerical methods in programming
  • Applications of blockchain technology in cloud storage
  • How to come up with an automated attendance system
  • Using dynamic libraries for site development
  • How to create cubic splines
  • Applications of artificial intelligence in the stock market
  • Uses of quantum computing in financial modeling

Your instructor may want you to challenge yourself with an advanced science project. Thus, you may require computer science topics to learn and research. Here are some that may inspire you:

  • Discuss the best cryptographic protocols
  • Advancement of artificial intelligence used in smartphones
  • Briefly discuss the types of security software available
  • Application of liquid robots in 2023
  • How to use quantum computers to solve decoherence problem
  • macOS vs. Windows; discuss their similarities and differences
  • Explain the steps taken in a cyber security audit

When searching for computer science topics for a seminar, make sure they are based on current research or events. Below are some of the latest research topics in computer science:

  • How to reduce cyber-attacks in 2023
  • Steps followed in creating a network
  • Discuss the uses of data science
  • Discuss ways in which social robots improve human interactions
  • Differentiate between supervised and unsupervised machine learning
  • Applications of robotics in space exploration
  • The contrast between cyber-physical and sensor network systems

Are you looking for computer science thesis topics for your upcoming projects? The topics below are meant to help you write your best paper yet:

  • Applications of computer science in sports
  • Uses of computer technology in the electoral process
  • Using Fibonacci to solve the functions maximum and their implementations
  • Discuss the advantages of using open-source software
  • Expound on the advancement of computer graphics
  • Briefly discuss the uses of mesh generation in computational domains
  • How much data is generated from the internet of things?

A computer science presentation requires a topic relevant to current events. Whether your paper is an assignment or a dissertation, you can find your final year computer science project topics below:

  • Uses of adaptive learning in the financial industry
  • Applications of transitive closure on graph
  • Using RAD technology in developing software
  • Discuss how to create maximum flow in the network
  • How to design and implement functional mapping
  • Using artificial intelligence in courier tracking and deliveries
  • How to make an e-authentication system

 Key Computer Science Essay Topics

You may be pressed for time and require computer science master thesis topics that are easy. Below are some topics that fit this description:

  • What are the uses of cloud computing in 2023
  • Discuss the server-side web technologies
  • Compare and contrast android and iOS
  • How to come up with a face detection algorithm
  • What is the future of NFTs
  • How to create an artificial intelligence shopping system
  • How to make a software piracy prevention algorithm

One major mistake students make when writing their papers is selecting topics unrelated to the study at hand. This, however, will not be an issue if you get topics related to computer science, such as the ones below:

  • Using blockchain to create a supply chain management system
  • How to protect a web app from malicious attacks
  • Uses of distributed information processing systems
  • Advancement of crowd communication software since COVID-19
  • Uses of artificial intelligence in online casinos
  • Discuss the pillars of math computations
  • Discuss the ethical concerns arising from data mining

We Can Help You with Computer Science Topics, Essays, Thesis, and Research Papers

We hope that this list of computer science topics helps you out of your sticky situation. We do offer other topics in different subjects. Additionally, we also offer professional writing services tailor-made for you.

We understand what students go through when searching the internet for computer science research paper topics, and we know that many students don’t know how to write a research paper to perfection. However, you shouldn’t have to go through all this when we’re here to help.

Don’t waste any more time; get in touch with us today and get your paper done excellently.

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Home » 500+ Computer Science Research Topics

500+ Computer Science Research Topics

Computer Science Research Topics

Computer Science is a constantly evolving field that has transformed the world we live in today. With new technologies emerging every day, there are countless research opportunities in this field. Whether you are interested in artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, data analytics, or computer networks, there are endless possibilities to explore. In this post, we will delve into some of the most interesting and important research topics in Computer Science. From the latest advancements in programming languages to the development of cutting-edge algorithms, we will explore the latest trends and innovations that are shaping the future of Computer Science. So, whether you are a student or a professional, read on to discover some of the most exciting research topics in this dynamic and rapidly expanding field.

Computer Science Research Topics

Computer Science Research Topics are as follows:

  • Using machine learning to detect and prevent cyber attacks
  • Developing algorithms for optimized resource allocation in cloud computing
  • Investigating the use of blockchain technology for secure and decentralized data storage
  • Developing intelligent chatbots for customer service
  • Investigating the effectiveness of deep learning for natural language processing
  • Developing algorithms for detecting and removing fake news from social media
  • Investigating the impact of social media on mental health
  • Developing algorithms for efficient image and video compression
  • Investigating the use of big data analytics for predictive maintenance in manufacturing
  • Developing algorithms for identifying and mitigating bias in machine learning models
  • Investigating the ethical implications of autonomous vehicles
  • Developing algorithms for detecting and preventing cyberbullying
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for personalized medicine
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate speech recognition
  • Investigating the impact of social media on political polarization
  • Developing algorithms for sentiment analysis in social media data
  • Investigating the use of virtual reality in education
  • Developing algorithms for efficient data encryption and decryption
  • Investigating the impact of technology on workplace productivity
  • Developing algorithms for detecting and mitigating deepfakes
  • Investigating the use of artificial intelligence in financial trading
  • Developing algorithms for efficient database management
  • Investigating the effectiveness of online learning platforms
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate facial recognition
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for predicting weather patterns
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure data transfer
  • Investigating the impact of technology on social skills and communication
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate object recognition
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for fraud detection in finance
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure authentication systems
  • Investigating the impact of technology on privacy and surveillance
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate handwriting recognition
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for predicting stock prices
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure biometric identification
  • Investigating the impact of technology on mental health and well-being
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate language translation
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for personalized advertising
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure payment systems
  • Investigating the impact of technology on the job market and automation
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate object tracking
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for predicting disease outbreaks
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure access control
  • Investigating the impact of technology on human behavior and decision making
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate sound recognition
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for predicting customer behavior
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure data backup and recovery
  • Investigating the impact of technology on education and learning outcomes
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate emotion recognition
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for improving healthcare outcomes
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure supply chain management
  • Investigating the impact of technology on cultural and societal norms
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate gesture recognition
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for predicting consumer demand
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure cloud storage
  • Investigating the impact of technology on environmental sustainability
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate voice recognition
  • Investigating the use of machine learning for improving transportation systems
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and secure mobile device management
  • Investigating the impact of technology on social inequality and access to resources
  • Machine learning for healthcare diagnosis and treatment
  • Machine Learning for Cybersecurity
  • Machine learning for personalized medicine
  • Cybersecurity threats and defense strategies
  • Big data analytics for business intelligence
  • Blockchain technology and its applications
  • Human-computer interaction in virtual reality environments
  • Artificial intelligence for autonomous vehicles
  • Natural language processing for chatbots
  • Cloud computing and its impact on the IT industry
  • Internet of Things (IoT) and smart homes
  • Robotics and automation in manufacturing
  • Augmented reality and its potential in education
  • Data mining techniques for customer relationship management
  • Computer vision for object recognition and tracking
  • Quantum computing and its applications in cryptography
  • Social media analytics and sentiment analysis
  • Recommender systems for personalized content delivery
  • Mobile computing and its impact on society
  • Bioinformatics and genomic data analysis
  • Deep learning for image and speech recognition
  • Digital signal processing and audio processing algorithms
  • Cloud storage and data security in the cloud
  • Wearable technology and its impact on healthcare
  • Computational linguistics for natural language understanding
  • Cognitive computing for decision support systems
  • Cyber-physical systems and their applications
  • Edge computing and its impact on IoT
  • Machine learning for fraud detection
  • Cryptography and its role in secure communication
  • Cybersecurity risks in the era of the Internet of Things
  • Natural language generation for automated report writing
  • 3D printing and its impact on manufacturing
  • Virtual assistants and their applications in daily life
  • Cloud-based gaming and its impact on the gaming industry
  • Computer networks and their security issues
  • Cyber forensics and its role in criminal investigations
  • Machine learning for predictive maintenance in industrial settings
  • Augmented reality for cultural heritage preservation
  • Human-robot interaction and its applications
  • Data visualization and its impact on decision-making
  • Cybersecurity in financial systems and blockchain
  • Computer graphics and animation techniques
  • Biometrics and its role in secure authentication
  • Cloud-based e-learning platforms and their impact on education
  • Natural language processing for machine translation
  • Machine learning for predictive maintenance in healthcare
  • Cybersecurity and privacy issues in social media
  • Computer vision for medical image analysis
  • Natural language generation for content creation
  • Cybersecurity challenges in cloud computing
  • Human-robot collaboration in manufacturing
  • Data mining for predicting customer churn
  • Artificial intelligence for autonomous drones
  • Cybersecurity risks in the healthcare industry
  • Machine learning for speech synthesis
  • Edge computing for low-latency applications
  • Virtual reality for mental health therapy
  • Quantum computing and its applications in finance
  • Biomedical engineering and its applications
  • Cybersecurity in autonomous systems
  • Machine learning for predictive maintenance in transportation
  • Computer vision for object detection in autonomous driving
  • Augmented reality for industrial training and simulations
  • Cloud-based cybersecurity solutions for small businesses
  • Natural language processing for knowledge management
  • Machine learning for personalized advertising
  • Cybersecurity in the supply chain management
  • Cybersecurity risks in the energy sector
  • Computer vision for facial recognition
  • Natural language processing for social media analysis
  • Machine learning for sentiment analysis in customer reviews
  • Explainable Artificial Intelligence
  • Quantum Computing
  • Blockchain Technology
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Cloud Computing
  • Robotics and Automation
  • Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
  • Cyber-Physical Systems
  • Computational Neuroscience
  • Big Data Analytics
  • Computer Vision
  • Cryptography and Network Security
  • Internet of Things
  • Computer Graphics and Visualization
  • Artificial Intelligence for Game Design
  • Computational Biology
  • Social Network Analysis
  • Bioinformatics
  • Distributed Systems and Middleware
  • Information Retrieval and Data Mining
  • Computer Networks
  • Mobile Computing and Wireless Networks
  • Software Engineering
  • Database Systems
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing
  • Human-Robot Interaction
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems
  • High-Performance Computing
  • Cyber-Physical Security
  • Deep Learning
  • Sensor Networks
  • Multi-Agent Systems
  • Human-Centered Computing
  • Wearable Computing
  • Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
  • Adaptive Systems
  • Brain-Computer Interface
  • Health Informatics
  • Cognitive Computing
  • Cybersecurity and Privacy
  • Internet Security
  • Cybercrime and Digital Forensics
  • Cloud Security
  • Cryptocurrencies and Digital Payments
  • Machine Learning for Natural Language Generation
  • Cognitive Robotics
  • Neural Networks
  • Semantic Web
  • Image Processing
  • Cyber Threat Intelligence
  • Secure Mobile Computing
  • Cybersecurity Education and Training
  • Privacy Preserving Techniques
  • Cyber-Physical Systems Security
  • Virtualization and Containerization
  • Machine Learning for Computer Vision
  • Network Function Virtualization
  • Cybersecurity Risk Management
  • Information Security Governance
  • Intrusion Detection and Prevention
  • Biometric Authentication
  • Machine Learning for Predictive Maintenance
  • Security in Cloud-based Environments
  • Cybersecurity for Industrial Control Systems
  • Smart Grid Security
  • Software Defined Networking
  • Quantum Cryptography
  • Security in the Internet of Things
  • Natural language processing for sentiment analysis
  • Blockchain technology for secure data sharing
  • Developing efficient algorithms for big data analysis
  • Cybersecurity for internet of things (IoT) devices
  • Human-robot interaction for industrial automation
  • Image recognition for autonomous vehicles
  • Social media analytics for marketing strategy
  • Quantum computing for solving complex problems
  • Biometric authentication for secure access control
  • Augmented reality for education and training
  • Intelligent transportation systems for traffic management
  • Predictive modeling for financial markets
  • Cloud computing for scalable data storage and processing
  • Virtual reality for therapy and mental health treatment
  • Data visualization for business intelligence
  • Recommender systems for personalized product recommendations
  • Speech recognition for voice-controlled devices
  • Mobile computing for real-time location-based services
  • Neural networks for predicting user behavior
  • Genetic algorithms for optimization problems
  • Distributed computing for parallel processing
  • Internet of things (IoT) for smart cities
  • Wireless sensor networks for environmental monitoring
  • Cloud-based gaming for high-performance gaming
  • Social network analysis for identifying influencers
  • Autonomous systems for agriculture
  • Robotics for disaster response
  • Data mining for customer segmentation
  • Computer graphics for visual effects in movies and video games
  • Virtual assistants for personalized customer service
  • Natural language understanding for chatbots
  • 3D printing for manufacturing prototypes
  • Artificial intelligence for stock trading
  • Machine learning for weather forecasting
  • Biomedical engineering for prosthetics and implants
  • Cybersecurity for financial institutions
  • Machine learning for energy consumption optimization
  • Computer vision for object tracking
  • Natural language processing for document summarization
  • Wearable technology for health and fitness monitoring
  • Internet of things (IoT) for home automation
  • Reinforcement learning for robotics control
  • Big data analytics for customer insights
  • Machine learning for supply chain optimization
  • Natural language processing for legal document analysis
  • Artificial intelligence for drug discovery
  • Computer vision for object recognition in robotics
  • Data mining for customer churn prediction
  • Autonomous systems for space exploration
  • Robotics for agriculture automation
  • Machine learning for predicting earthquakes
  • Natural language processing for sentiment analysis in customer reviews
  • Big data analytics for predicting natural disasters
  • Internet of things (IoT) for remote patient monitoring
  • Blockchain technology for digital identity management
  • Machine learning for predicting wildfire spread
  • Computer vision for gesture recognition
  • Natural language processing for automated translation
  • Big data analytics for fraud detection in banking
  • Internet of things (IoT) for smart homes
  • Robotics for warehouse automation
  • Machine learning for predicting air pollution
  • Natural language processing for medical record analysis
  • Augmented reality for architectural design
  • Big data analytics for predicting traffic congestion
  • Machine learning for predicting customer lifetime value
  • Developing algorithms for efficient and accurate text recognition
  • Natural Language Processing for Virtual Assistants
  • Natural Language Processing for Sentiment Analysis in Social Media
  • Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for Trust and Transparency
  • Deep Learning for Image and Video Retrieval
  • Edge Computing for Internet of Things (IoT) Applications
  • Data Science for Social Media Analytics
  • Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure Protection
  • Natural Language Processing for Text Classification
  • Quantum Computing for Optimization Problems
  • Machine Learning for Personalized Health Monitoring
  • Computer Vision for Autonomous Driving
  • Blockchain Technology for Supply Chain Management
  • Augmented Reality for Education and Training
  • Natural Language Processing for Sentiment Analysis
  • Machine Learning for Personalized Marketing
  • Big Data Analytics for Financial Fraud Detection
  • Cybersecurity for Cloud Security Assessment
  • Artificial Intelligence for Natural Language Understanding
  • Blockchain Technology for Decentralized Applications
  • Virtual Reality for Cultural Heritage Preservation
  • Natural Language Processing for Named Entity Recognition
  • Machine Learning for Customer Churn Prediction
  • Big Data Analytics for Social Network Analysis
  • Cybersecurity for Intrusion Detection and Prevention
  • Artificial Intelligence for Robotics and Automation
  • Blockchain Technology for Digital Identity Management
  • Virtual Reality for Rehabilitation and Therapy
  • Natural Language Processing for Text Summarization
  • Machine Learning for Credit Risk Assessment
  • Big Data Analytics for Fraud Detection in Healthcare
  • Cybersecurity for Internet Privacy Protection
  • Artificial Intelligence for Game Design and Development
  • Blockchain Technology for Decentralized Social Networks
  • Virtual Reality for Marketing and Advertising
  • Natural Language Processing for Opinion Mining
  • Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection
  • Big Data Analytics for Predictive Maintenance in Transportation
  • Cybersecurity for Network Security Management
  • Artificial Intelligence for Personalized News and Content Delivery
  • Blockchain Technology for Cryptocurrency Mining
  • Virtual Reality for Architectural Design and Visualization
  • Natural Language Processing for Machine Translation
  • Machine Learning for Automated Image Captioning
  • Big Data Analytics for Stock Market Prediction
  • Cybersecurity for Biometric Authentication Systems
  • Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction
  • Blockchain Technology for Smart Grids
  • Virtual Reality for Sports Training and Simulation
  • Natural Language Processing for Question Answering Systems
  • Machine Learning for Sentiment Analysis in Customer Feedback
  • Big Data Analytics for Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing
  • Cybersecurity for Cloud-Based Systems
  • Artificial Intelligence for Automated Journalism
  • Blockchain Technology for Intellectual Property Management
  • Virtual Reality for Therapy and Rehabilitation
  • Natural Language Processing for Language Generation
  • Machine Learning for Customer Lifetime Value Prediction
  • Big Data Analytics for Predictive Maintenance in Energy Systems
  • Cybersecurity for Secure Mobile Communication
  • Artificial Intelligence for Emotion Recognition
  • Blockchain Technology for Digital Asset Trading
  • Virtual Reality for Automotive Design and Visualization
  • Natural Language Processing for Semantic Web
  • Machine Learning for Fraud Detection in Financial Transactions
  • Big Data Analytics for Social Media Monitoring
  • Cybersecurity for Cloud Storage and Sharing
  • Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Education
  • Blockchain Technology for Secure Online Voting Systems
  • Virtual Reality for Cultural Tourism
  • Natural Language Processing for Chatbot Communication
  • Machine Learning for Medical Diagnosis and Treatment
  • Big Data Analytics for Environmental Monitoring and Management.
  • Cybersecurity for Cloud Computing Environments
  • Virtual Reality for Training and Simulation
  • Big Data Analytics for Sports Performance Analysis
  • Cybersecurity for Internet of Things (IoT) Devices
  • Artificial Intelligence for Traffic Management and Control
  • Blockchain Technology for Smart Contracts
  • Natural Language Processing for Document Summarization
  • Machine Learning for Image and Video Recognition
  • Blockchain Technology for Digital Asset Management
  • Virtual Reality for Entertainment and Gaming
  • Natural Language Processing for Opinion Mining in Online Reviews
  • Machine Learning for Customer Relationship Management
  • Big Data Analytics for Environmental Monitoring and Management
  • Cybersecurity for Network Traffic Analysis and Monitoring
  • Artificial Intelligence for Natural Language Generation
  • Blockchain Technology for Supply Chain Transparency and Traceability
  • Virtual Reality for Design and Visualization
  • Natural Language Processing for Speech Recognition
  • Machine Learning for Recommendation Systems
  • Big Data Analytics for Customer Segmentation and Targeting
  • Cybersecurity for Biometric Authentication
  • Artificial Intelligence for Human-Computer Interaction
  • Blockchain Technology for Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
  • Virtual Reality for Tourism and Cultural Heritage
  • Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Threat Detection and Prevention
  • Big Data Analytics for Healthcare Cost Reduction
  • Cybersecurity for Data Privacy and Protection
  • Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Vehicles
  • Blockchain Technology for Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Security
  • Virtual Reality for Real Estate Visualization
  • Natural Language Processing for Question Answering
  • Big Data Analytics for Financial Markets Prediction
  • Cybersecurity for Cloud-Based Machine Learning Systems
  • Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Advertising
  • Blockchain Technology for Digital Identity Verification
  • Virtual Reality for Cultural and Language Learning
  • Natural Language Processing for Semantic Analysis
  • Machine Learning for Business Forecasting
  • Big Data Analytics for Social Media Marketing
  • Artificial Intelligence for Content Generation
  • Blockchain Technology for Smart Cities
  • Virtual Reality for Historical Reconstruction
  • Natural Language Processing for Knowledge Graph Construction
  • Machine Learning for Speech Synthesis
  • Big Data Analytics for Traffic Optimization
  • Artificial Intelligence for Social Robotics
  • Blockchain Technology for Healthcare Data Management
  • Virtual Reality for Disaster Preparedness and Response
  • Natural Language Processing for Multilingual Communication
  • Machine Learning for Emotion Recognition
  • Big Data Analytics for Human Resources Management
  • Cybersecurity for Mobile App Security
  • Artificial Intelligence for Financial Planning and Investment
  • Blockchain Technology for Energy Management
  • Virtual Reality for Cultural Preservation and Heritage.
  • Big Data Analytics for Healthcare Management
  • Cybersecurity in the Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Artificial Intelligence for Predictive Maintenance
  • Computational Biology for Drug Discovery
  • Virtual Reality for Mental Health Treatment
  • Machine Learning for Sentiment Analysis in Social Media
  • Human-Computer Interaction for User Experience Design
  • Cloud Computing for Disaster Recovery
  • Quantum Computing for Cryptography
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems for Smart Cities
  • Cybersecurity for Autonomous Vehicles
  • Artificial Intelligence for Fraud Detection in Financial Systems
  • Social Network Analysis for Marketing Campaigns
  • Cloud Computing for Video Game Streaming
  • Machine Learning for Speech Recognition
  • Augmented Reality for Architecture and Design
  • Natural Language Processing for Customer Service Chatbots
  • Machine Learning for Climate Change Prediction
  • Big Data Analytics for Social Sciences
  • Artificial Intelligence for Energy Management
  • Virtual Reality for Tourism and Travel
  • Cybersecurity for Smart Grids
  • Machine Learning for Image Recognition
  • Augmented Reality for Sports Training
  • Natural Language Processing for Content Creation
  • Cloud Computing for High-Performance Computing
  • Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Medicine
  • Virtual Reality for Architecture and Design
  • Augmented Reality for Product Visualization
  • Natural Language Processing for Language Translation
  • Cybersecurity for Cloud Computing
  • Artificial Intelligence for Supply Chain Optimization
  • Blockchain Technology for Digital Voting Systems
  • Virtual Reality for Job Training
  • Augmented Reality for Retail Shopping
  • Natural Language Processing for Sentiment Analysis in Customer Feedback
  • Cloud Computing for Mobile Application Development
  • Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity Threat Detection
  • Blockchain Technology for Intellectual Property Protection
  • Virtual Reality for Music Education
  • Machine Learning for Financial Forecasting
  • Augmented Reality for Medical Education
  • Natural Language Processing for News Summarization
  • Cybersecurity for Healthcare Data Protection
  • Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Robots
  • Virtual Reality for Fitness and Health
  • Machine Learning for Natural Language Understanding
  • Augmented Reality for Museum Exhibits
  • Natural Language Processing for Chatbot Personality Development
  • Cloud Computing for Website Performance Optimization
  • Artificial Intelligence for E-commerce Recommendation Systems
  • Blockchain Technology for Supply Chain Traceability
  • Virtual Reality for Military Training
  • Augmented Reality for Advertising
  • Natural Language Processing for Chatbot Conversation Management
  • Cybersecurity for Cloud-Based Services
  • Artificial Intelligence for Agricultural Management
  • Blockchain Technology for Food Safety Assurance
  • Virtual Reality for Historical Reenactments
  • Machine Learning for Cybersecurity Incident Response.
  • Secure Multiparty Computation
  • Federated Learning
  • Internet of Things Security
  • Blockchain Scalability
  • Quantum Computing Algorithms
  • Explainable AI
  • Data Privacy in the Age of Big Data
  • Adversarial Machine Learning
  • Deep Reinforcement Learning
  • Online Learning and Streaming Algorithms
  • Graph Neural Networks
  • Automated Debugging and Fault Localization
  • Mobile Application Development
  • Software Engineering for Cloud Computing
  • Cryptocurrency Security
  • Edge Computing for Real-Time Applications
  • Natural Language Generation
  • Virtual and Augmented Reality
  • Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
  • Internet of Things Applications
  • Robotics and Autonomous Systems
  • Explainable Robotics
  • 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing
  • Distributed Systems
  • Parallel Computing
  • Data Center Networking
  • Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
  • Information Retrieval and Search Engines
  • Network Security and Privacy
  • Cloud Computing Security
  • Data Analytics for Business Intelligence
  • Neural Networks and Deep Learning
  • Reinforcement Learning for Robotics
  • Automated Planning and Scheduling
  • Evolutionary Computation and Genetic Algorithms
  • Formal Methods for Software Engineering
  • Computational Complexity Theory
  • Bio-inspired Computing
  • Computer Vision for Object Recognition
  • Automated Reasoning and Theorem Proving
  • Natural Language Understanding
  • Machine Learning for Healthcare
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Latest Computer Science Research Topics for 2024

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Everybody sees a dream—aspiring to become a doctor, astronaut, or anything that fits your imagination. If you were someone who had a keen interest in looking for answers and knowing the “why” behind things, you might be a good fit for research. Further, if this interest revolved around computers and tech, you would be an excellent computer researcher!

As a tech enthusiast, you must know how technology is making our life easy and comfortable. With a single click, Google can get you answers to your silliest query or let you know the best restaurants around you. Do you know what generates that answer? Want to learn about the science going on behind these gadgets and the internet?

For this, you will have to do a bit of research. Here we will learn about top computer science thesis topics and computer science thesis ideas.

Why is Research in Computer Science Important?

Computers and technology are becoming an integral part of our lives. We are dependent on them for most of our work. With the changing lifestyle and needs of the people, continuous research in this sector is required to ease human work. However, you need to be a certified researcher to contribute to the field of computers. You can check out Advance Computer Programming certification to learn and advance in the versatile language and get hands-on experience with all the topics of C# application development.

1. Innovation in Technology

Research in computer science contributes to technological advancement and innovations. We end up discovering new things and introducing them to the world. Through research, scientists and engineers can create new hardware, software, and algorithms that improve the functionality, performance, and usability of computers and other digital devices.

2. Problem-Solving Capabilities

From disease outbreaks to climate change, solving complex problems requires the use of advanced computer models and algorithms. Computer science research enables scholars to create methods and tools that can help in resolving these challenging issues in a blink of an eye.

3. Enhancing Human Life

Computer science research has the potential to significantly enhance human life in a variety of ways. For instance, researchers can produce educational software that enhances student learning or new healthcare technology that improves clinical results. If you wish to do Ph.D., these can become interesting computer science research topics for a PhD.

4. Security Assurance

As more sensitive data is being transmitted and kept online, security is our main concern. Computer science research is crucial for creating new security systems and tactics that defend against online threats.

Top Computer Science Research Topics

Before starting with the research, knowing the trendy research paper ideas for computer science exploration is important. It is not so easy to get your hands on the best research topics for computer science; spend some time and read about the following mind-boggling ideas before selecting one.

1. Integrated Blockchain and Edge Computing Systems: A Survey, Some Research Issues, and Challenges

Welcome to the era of seamless connectivity and unparalleled efficiency! Blockchain and edge computing are two cutting-edge technologies that have the potential to revolutionize numerous sectors. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that is decentralized and offers a safe and transparent method of storing and transferring data.

As a young researcher, you can pave the way for a more secure, efficient, and scalable architecture that integrates blockchain and edge computing systems. So, let's roll up our sleeves and get ready to push the boundaries of technology with this exciting innovation!

Blockchain helps to reduce latency and boost speed. Edge computing, on the other hand, entails processing data close to the generation source, such as sensors and IoT devices. Integrating edge computing with blockchain technologies can help to achieve safer, more effective, and scalable architecture.

Moreover, this research title for computer science might open doors of opportunities for you in the financial sector.

2. A Survey on Edge Computing Systems and Tools

With the rise in population, the data is multiplying by manifolds each day. It's high time we find efficient technology to store it. However, more research is required for the same.

Say hello to the future of computing with edge computing! The edge computing system can store vast amounts of data to retrieve in the future. It also provides fast access to information in need. It maintains computing resources from the cloud and data centers while processing.

Edge computing systems bring processing power closer to the data source, resulting in faster and more efficient computing. But what tools are available to help us harness the power of edge computing?

As a part of this research, you will look at the newest edge computing tools and technologies to see how they can improve your computing experience. Here are some of the tools you might get familiar with upon completion of this research:

  • Apache NiFi:  A framework for data processing that enables users to gather, transform, and transfer data from edge devices to cloud computing infrastructure.
  • Microsoft Azure IoT Edge: A platform in the cloud that enables the creation and deployment of cutting-edge intelligent applications.
  • OpenFog Consortium:  An organization that supports the advancement of fog computing technologies and architectures is the OpenFog Consortium.

3. Machine Learning: Algorithms, Real-world Applications, and Research Directions

Machine learning is the superset of Artificial Intelligence; a ground-breaking technology used to train machines to mimic human action and work. ML is used in everything from virtual assistants to self-driving cars and is revolutionizing the way we interact with computers. But what is machine learning exactly, and what are some of its practical uses and future research directions?

To find answers to such questions, it can be a wonderful choice to pick from the pool of various computer science dissertation ideas.

You will discover how computers learn several actions without explicit programming and see how they perform beyond their current capabilities. However, to understand better, having some basic programming knowledge always helps. KnowledgeHut’s Programming course for beginners will help you learn the most in-demand programming languages and technologies with hands-on projects.

During the research, you will work on and study

  • Algorithm: Machine learning includes many algorithms, from decision trees to neural networks.
  • Applications in the Real-world: You can see the usage of ML in many places. It can early detect and diagnose diseases like cancer. It can detect fraud when you are making payments. You can also use it for personalized advertising.
  • Research Trend:  The most recent developments in machine learning research, include explainable AI, reinforcement learning, and federated learning.

While a single research paper is not enough to bring the light on an entire domain as vast as machine learning; it can help you witness how applicable it is in numerous fields, like engineering, data science & analysis, business intelligence, and many more.

Whether you are a data scientist with years of experience or a curious tech enthusiast, machine learning is an intriguing and vital field that's influencing the direction of technology. So why not dig deeper?

4. Evolutionary Algorithms and their Applications to Engineering Problems

Imagine a system that can solve most of your complex queries. Are you interested to know how these systems work? It is because of some algorithms. But what are they, and how do they work? Evolutionary algorithms use genetic operators like mutation and crossover to build new generations of solutions rather than starting from scratch.

This research topic can be a choice of interest for someone who wants to learn more about algorithms and their vitality in engineering.

Evolutionary algorithms are transforming the way we approach engineering challenges by allowing us to explore enormous solution areas and optimize complex systems.

The possibilities are infinite as long as this technology is developed further. Get ready to explore the fascinating world of evolutionary algorithms and their applications in addressing engineering issues.

5. The Role of Big Data Analytics in the Industrial Internet of Things

Datasets can have answers to most of your questions. With good research and approach, analyzing this data can bring magical results. Welcome to the world of data-driven insights! Big Data Analytics is the transformative process of extracting valuable knowledge and patterns from vast and complex datasets, boosting innovation and informed decision-making.

This field allows you to transform the enormous amounts of data produced by IoT devices into insightful knowledge that has the potential to change how large-scale industries work. It's like having a crystal ball that can foretell.

Big data analytics is being utilized to address some of the most critical issues, from supply chain optimization to predictive maintenance. Using it, you can find patterns, spot abnormalities, and make data-driven decisions that increase effectiveness and lower costs for several industrial operations by analyzing data from sensors and other IoT devices.

The area is so vast that you'll need proper research to use and interpret all this information. Choose this as your computer research topic to discover big data analytics' most compelling applications and benefits. You will see that a significant portion of industrial IoT technology demands the study of interconnected systems, and there's nothing more suitable than extensive data analysis.

6. An Efficient Lightweight Integrated Blockchain (ELIB) Model for IoT Security and Privacy

Are you concerned about the security and privacy of your Internet of Things (IoT) devices? As more and more devices become connected, it is more important than ever to protect the security and privacy of data. If you are interested in cyber security and want to find new ways of strengthening it, this is the field for you.

ELIB is a cutting-edge solution that offers private and secure communication between IoT devices by fusing the strength of blockchain with lightweight cryptography. This architecture stores encrypted data on a distributed ledger so only parties with permission can access it.

But why is ELIB so practical and portable? ELIB uses lightweight cryptography to provide quick and effective communication between devices, unlike conventional blockchain models that need complicated and resource-intensive computations.

Due to its increasing vitality, it is gaining popularity as a research topic as someone aware that this framework works and helps reinstate data security is highly demanded in financial and banking.

7. Natural Language Processing Techniques to Reveal Human-Computer Interaction for Development Research Topics

Welcome to the world where machines decode the beauty of the human language. With natural language processing (NLP) techniques, we can analyze the interactions between humans and computers to reveal valuable insights for development research topics. It is also one of the most crucial PhD topics in computer science as NLP-based applications are gaining more and more traction.

Etymologically, natural language processing (NLP) is a potential technique that enables us to examine and comprehend natural language data, such as discussions between people and machines. Insights on user behaviour, preferences, and pain areas can be gleaned from these encounters utilizing NLP approaches.

But which specific areas should we leverage on using NLP methods? This is precisely what you’ll discover while doing this computer science research.

Gear up to learn more about the fascinating field of NLP and how it can change how we design and interact with technology, whether you are a UX designer, a data scientist, or just a curious tech lover and linguist.

8. All One Needs to Know About Fog Computing and Related Edge Computing Paradigms: A Complete Survey

If you are an IoT expert or a keen lover of the Internet of Things, you should leap and move forward to discovering Fog Computing. With the rise of connected devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), traditional cloud computing models are no longer enough. That's where fog computing and related edge computing paradigms come in.

Fog computing is a distributed approach that brings processing and data storage closer to the devices that generate and consume data by extending cloud computing to the network's edge.

As computing technologies are significantly used today, the area has become a hub for researchers to delve deeper into the underlying concepts and devise more and more fog computing frameworks. You can also contribute to and master this architecture by opting for this stand-out topic for your research.

Tips and Tricks to Write Computer Research Topics

Before starting to explore these hot research topics in computer science you may have to know about some tips and tricks that can easily help you.

  • Know your interest.
  • Choose the topic wisely.
  • Make proper research about the demand of the topic.
  • Get proper references.
  • Discuss with experts.

By following these tips and tricks, you can write a compelling and impactful computer research topic that contributes to the field's advancement and addresses important research gaps.

From machine learning and artificial intelligence to blockchain, edge computing, and big data analytics, numerous trending computer research topics exist to explore.

One of the most important trends is using cutting-edge technology to address current issues. For instance, new IIoT security and privacy opportunities are emerging by integrating blockchain and edge computing. Similarly, the application of natural language processing methods is assisting in revealing human-computer interaction and guiding the creation of new technologies.

Another trend is the growing emphasis on sustainability and moral considerations in technological development. Researchers are looking into how computer science might help in innovation.

With the latest developments and leveraging cutting-edge tools and techniques, researchers can make meaningful contributions to the field and help shape the future of technology. Going for Full-stack Developer online training will help you master the latest tools and technologies. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Research in computer science is mainly focused on different niches. It can be theoretical or technical as well. It completely depends upon the candidate and his focused area. They may do research for inventing new algorithms or many more to get advanced responses in that field.  

Yes, moreover it would be a very good opportunity for the candidate. Because computer science students may have a piece of knowledge about the topic previously. They may find Easy thesis topics for computer science to fulfill their research through KnowledgeHut. 

 There are several scopes available for computer science. A candidate can choose different subjects such as AI, database management, software design, graphics, and many more. 

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Research Topics & Ideas: CompSci & IT

50+ Computer Science Research Topic Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

IT & Computer Science Research Topics

Finding and choosing a strong research topic is the critical first step when it comes to crafting a high-quality dissertation, thesis or research project. If you’ve landed on this post, chances are you’re looking for a computer science-related research topic , but aren’t sure where to start. Here, we’ll explore a variety of CompSci & IT-related research ideas and topic thought-starters, including algorithms, AI, networking, database systems, UX, information security and software engineering.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps . In this post, we’ll kickstart the process by sharing some research topic ideas within the CompSci domain. This is the starting point, but to develop a well-defined research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , along with a well-justified plan of action to fill that gap.

If you’re new to the oftentimes perplexing world of research, or if this is your first time undertaking a formal academic research project, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course. In it, we cover the process of writing a dissertation or thesis from start to end. Be sure to also sign up for our free webinar that explores how to find a high-quality research topic. 

Overview: CompSci Research Topics

  • Algorithms & data structures
  • Artificial intelligence ( AI )
  • Computer networking
  • Database systems
  • Human-computer interaction
  • Information security (IS)
  • Software engineering
  • Examples of CompSci dissertation & theses

Topics/Ideas: Algorithms & Data Structures

  • An analysis of neural network algorithms’ accuracy for processing consumer purchase patterns
  • A systematic review of the impact of graph algorithms on data analysis and discovery in social media network analysis
  • An evaluation of machine learning algorithms used for recommender systems in streaming services
  • A review of approximation algorithm approaches for solving NP-hard problems
  • An analysis of parallel algorithms for high-performance computing of genomic data
  • The influence of data structures on optimal algorithm design and performance in Fintech
  • A Survey of algorithms applied in internet of things (IoT) systems in supply-chain management
  • A comparison of streaming algorithm performance for the detection of elephant flows
  • A systematic review and evaluation of machine learning algorithms used in facial pattern recognition
  • Exploring the performance of a decision tree-based approach for optimizing stock purchase decisions
  • Assessing the importance of complete and representative training datasets in Agricultural machine learning based decision making.
  • A Comparison of Deep learning algorithms performance for structured and unstructured datasets with “rare cases”
  • A systematic review of noise reduction best practices for machine learning algorithms in geoinformatics.
  • Exploring the feasibility of applying information theory to feature extraction in retail datasets.
  • Assessing the use case of neural network algorithms for image analysis in biodiversity assessment

Topics & Ideas: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  • Applying deep learning algorithms for speech recognition in speech-impaired children
  • A review of the impact of artificial intelligence on decision-making processes in stock valuation
  • An evaluation of reinforcement learning algorithms used in the production of video games
  • An exploration of key developments in natural language processing and how they impacted the evolution of Chabots.
  • An analysis of the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence-based automated marking
  • The influence of large-scale GIS datasets on artificial intelligence and machine learning developments
  • An examination of the use of artificial intelligence in orthopaedic surgery
  • The impact of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) on transparency and trust in supply chain management
  • An evaluation of the role of artificial intelligence in financial forecasting and risk management in cryptocurrency
  • A meta-analysis of deep learning algorithm performance in predicting and cyber attacks in schools

Research topic idea mega list

Topics & Ideas: Networking

  • An analysis of the impact of 5G technology on internet penetration in rural Tanzania
  • Assessing the role of software-defined networking (SDN) in modern cloud-based computing
  • A critical analysis of network security and privacy concerns associated with Industry 4.0 investment in healthcare.
  • Exploring the influence of cloud computing on security risks in fintech.
  • An examination of the use of network function virtualization (NFV) in telecom networks in Southern America
  • Assessing the impact of edge computing on network architecture and design in IoT-based manufacturing
  • An evaluation of the challenges and opportunities in 6G wireless network adoption
  • The role of network congestion control algorithms in improving network performance on streaming platforms
  • An analysis of network coding-based approaches for data security
  • Assessing the impact of network topology on network performance and reliability in IoT-based workspaces

Free Webinar: How To Find A Dissertation Research Topic

Topics & Ideas: Database Systems

  • An analysis of big data management systems and technologies used in B2B marketing
  • The impact of NoSQL databases on data management and analysis in smart cities
  • An evaluation of the security and privacy concerns of cloud-based databases in financial organisations
  • Exploring the role of data warehousing and business intelligence in global consultancies
  • An analysis of the use of graph databases for data modelling and analysis in recommendation systems
  • The influence of the Internet of Things (IoT) on database design and management in the retail grocery industry
  • An examination of the challenges and opportunities of distributed databases in supply chain management
  • Assessing the impact of data compression algorithms on database performance and scalability in cloud computing
  • An evaluation of the use of in-memory databases for real-time data processing in patient monitoring
  • Comparing the effects of database tuning and optimization approaches in improving database performance and efficiency in omnichannel retailing

Topics & Ideas: Human-Computer Interaction

  • An analysis of the impact of mobile technology on human-computer interaction prevalence in adolescent men
  • An exploration of how artificial intelligence is changing human-computer interaction patterns in children
  • An evaluation of the usability and accessibility of web-based systems for CRM in the fast fashion retail sector
  • Assessing the influence of virtual and augmented reality on consumer purchasing patterns
  • An examination of the use of gesture-based interfaces in architecture
  • Exploring the impact of ease of use in wearable technology on geriatric user
  • Evaluating the ramifications of gamification in the Metaverse
  • A systematic review of user experience (UX) design advances associated with Augmented Reality
  • A comparison of natural language processing algorithms automation of customer response Comparing end-user perceptions of natural language processing algorithms for automated customer response
  • Analysing the impact of voice-based interfaces on purchase practices in the fast food industry

Research Topic Kickstarter - Need Help Finding A Research Topic?

Topics & Ideas: Information Security

  • A bibliometric review of current trends in cryptography for secure communication
  • An analysis of secure multi-party computation protocols and their applications in cloud-based computing
  • An investigation of the security of blockchain technology in patient health record tracking
  • A comparative study of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms for instant text messaging
  • A systematic review of secure data storage solutions used for cloud computing in the fintech industry
  • An analysis of intrusion detection and prevention systems used in the healthcare sector
  • Assessing security best practices for IoT devices in political offices
  • An investigation into the role social media played in shifting regulations related to privacy and the protection of personal data
  • A comparative study of digital signature schemes adoption in property transfers
  • An assessment of the security of secure wireless communication systems used in tertiary institutions

Topics & Ideas: Software Engineering

  • A study of agile software development methodologies and their impact on project success in pharmacology
  • Investigating the impacts of software refactoring techniques and tools in blockchain-based developments
  • A study of the impact of DevOps practices on software development and delivery in the healthcare sector
  • An analysis of software architecture patterns and their impact on the maintainability and scalability of cloud-based offerings
  • A study of the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning on software engineering practices in the education sector
  • An investigation of software testing techniques and methodologies for subscription-based offerings
  • A review of software security practices and techniques for protecting against phishing attacks from social media
  • An analysis of the impact of cloud computing on the rate of software development and deployment in the manufacturing sector
  • Exploring the impact of software development outsourcing on project success in multinational contexts
  • An investigation into the effect of poor software documentation on app success in the retail sector

CompSci & IT Dissertations/Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a CompSci-related research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various CompSci-related degree programs to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

  • An array-based optimization framework for query processing and data analytics (Chen, 2021)
  • Dynamic Object Partitioning and replication for cooperative cache (Asad, 2021)
  • Embedding constructural documentation in unit tests (Nassif, 2019)
  • PLASA | Programming Language for Synchronous Agents (Kilaru, 2019)
  • Healthcare Data Authentication using Deep Neural Network (Sekar, 2020)
  • Virtual Reality System for Planetary Surface Visualization and Analysis (Quach, 2019)
  • Artificial neural networks to predict share prices on the Johannesburg stock exchange (Pyon, 2021)
  • Predicting household poverty with machine learning methods: the case of Malawi (Chinyama, 2022)
  • Investigating user experience and bias mitigation of the multi-modal retrieval of historical data (Singh, 2021)
  • Detection of HTTPS malware traffic without decryption (Nyathi, 2022)
  • Redefining privacy: case study of smart health applications (Al-Zyoud, 2019)
  • A state-based approach to context modeling and computing (Yue, 2019)
  • A Novel Cooperative Intrusion Detection System for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (Solomon, 2019)
  • HRSB-Tree for Spatio-Temporal Aggregates over Moving Regions (Paduri, 2019)

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are quite specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. This is an important thing to keep in mind as you develop your own research topic. That is to say, to create a top-notch research topic, you must be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

Fast-Track Your Research Topic

If you’re still feeling a bit unsure about how to find a research topic for your Computer Science dissertation or research project, check out our Topic Kickstarter service.

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Research topics and ideas about data science and big data analytics

Investigating the impacts of software refactoring techniques and tools in blockchain-based developments.

Steps on getting this project topic

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I want to work with this topic, am requesting materials to guide.

Yadessa Dugassa

Information Technology -MSc program

Andrew Itodo

It’s really interesting but how can I have access to the materials to guide me through my work?

Sorie A. Turay

That’s my problem also.

kumar

Investigating the impacts of software refactoring techniques and tools in blockchain-based developments is in my favour. May i get the proper material about that ?

BEATRICE OSAMEGBE

BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

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Computer Science Research Paper Topics: 30+ Ideas for You

Author Image

by  Antony W

November 26, 2023

computer science research paper topics

We’ve written a lot on computer science to know that choosing research paper topics in the subject isn’t as easy as flipping a bulb’s switch. Brainstorming can take an entire afternoon before you come up with something constructive.

However, looking at prewritten topics is a great way to identify an idea to guide your research. 

In this post, we give you a list of 20+ research paper topics on computer science to cut your ideation time to zero.

  • Scan the list.
  • Identify what topic piques your interest
  • Develop your research question , and
  • Follow our guide to write a research paper .

Key Takeaways 

  • Computer science is a broad field, meaning you can come up with endless number of topics for your research paper.
  • With the freedom to choose the topic you want, consider working on a theme that you’ve always wanted to investigate.
  • Focusing your research on a trending topic in the computer science space can be a plus.
  • As long as a topic allows you to complete the steps of a research process with ease, work on it.

Computer Science Research Paper Topics

The following are 30+ research topics and ideas from which you can choose a title for your computer science project:

Artificial Intelligence Topics

AI made its first appearance in 1958 when Frank Rosenblatt developed the first deep neural network that could generate an original idea. Yet, there’s no time Artificial Intelligence has ever been a profound as it is right now. Interesting and equally controversial, AI opens door to an array of research opportunity, meaning there are countless topics that you can investigate in a project, including the following:

  • Write about the efficacy of deep learning algorithms in forecasting and mitigating cyber-attacks within educational institutions. 
  • Focus on a study of the transformative impact of recent advances in natural language processing.
  • Explain Artificial Intelligence’s influence on stock valuation decision-making, making sure you touch on impacts and implications.
  • Write a research project on harnessing deep learning for speech recognition in children with speech impairments.
  • Focus your paper on an in-depth evaluation of reinforcement learning algorithms in video game development.
  • Write a research project that focuses on the integration of artificial intelligence in orthopedic surgery.
  • Examine the social implications and ethical considerations of AI-based automated marking systems.
  • Artificial Intelligence’s role in cryptocurrency: Evaluating its impact on financial forecasting and risk management
  • The confluence of large-scale GIS datasets with AI and machine learning

Data Structure and Algorithms Topics

Topics on data structure and algorithm focus on the storage, retrieval, and efficient use of data. Here are some ideas that you may find interesting for a research project in this area:

  • Do an in-depth investigation of the efficacy of deep learning algorithms on structured and unstructured datasets.
  • Conduct a comprehensive survey of approximation algorithms for solving NP-hard problems.
  • Analyze the performance of decision tree-based approaches in optimizing stock purchasing decisions.
  • Do a critical examination of the accuracy of neural network algorithms in processing consumer purchase patterns.
  • Explore parallel algorithms for high-performance computing of genomic data. 
  • Evaluate machine-learning algorithms in facial pattern recognition.
  • Examine the applicability of neural network algorithms for image analysis in biodiversity assessment
  • Investigate the impact of data structures on optimal algorithm design and performance in financial technology
  • Write a research paper on the survey of algorithm applications in Internet of Things (IoT) systems for supply-chain management.

Networking Topics

The networking topics in research focus on the communication between computer devices. Your project can focus on data transmission, data exchange, and data resources. You can focus on media access control, network topology design, packet classification, and so much more. Here are some ideas to get you started with your research: 

  • Analyzing the influence of 5g technology on rural internet accessibility in Africa
  • The significance of network congestion control algorithms in enhancing streaming platform performance
  • Evaluate the role of software-defined networking in contemporary cloud-based computing environments
  • Examining the impact of network topology on performance and reliability of internet-of-things
  • A comprehensive investigation of the integration of network function virtualization in telecommunication networks across South America
  • A critical appraisal of network security and privacy challenges amid industry investments in healthcare
  • Assessing the influence of edge computing on network architecture and design within Internet of Things
  • Evaluating challenges and opportunities in the adoption of 6g wireless networks
  • Exploring the intersection of cloud computing and security risks in the financial technology sector
  • An analysis of network coding-based approaches for enhanced data security

Database Topic Ideas

Computer science relies heavily on data to produce information. This data requires efficient and secure management and mitigation for it to be of any good value. Given just how wide this area is as well, your database research topic can be on anything that you find fascinating to explore. Below are some ideas to get started:

  • Examining big data management systems and technologies in business-to-business marketing
  • Assessing the use of in-memory databases for real-time data processing in patient monitoring
  • An analytical study on the implementation of graph databases for data modeling and analysis in recommendation systems
  • Understanding the impact of NOSQL databases on data management and analysis within smart cities
  • The evolving dynamics of database design and management in the retail grocery industry under the influence of the internet of things
  • Evaluating the effects of data compression algorithms on database performance and scalability in cloud computing environments
  • An in-depth examination of the challenges and opportunities presented by distributed databases in supply chain management
  • Addressing security and privacy concerns of cloud-based databases in financial organizations
  • Comparative analysis of database tuning and optimization approaches for enhancing efficiency in Omni channel retailing
  • Exploring the nexus of data warehousing and business intelligence in the landscape of global consultancies

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Join the community, trending research, a hybrid dsp/deep learning approach to real-time full-band speech enhancement.

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Despite noise suppression being a mature area in signal processing, it remains highly dependent on fine tuning of estimator algorithms and parameters.

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Empowering Robotics with Large Language Models: osmAG Map Comprehension with LLMs

In this letter, we address the problem of enabling LLMs to comprehend Area Graph, a text-based map representation, in order to enhance their applicability in the field of mobile robotics.

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Nezha bridges the gap between protocols such as Multi-Paxos and Raft, which can be readily deployed and protocols such as NOPaxos and Speculative Paxos, that provide better performance, but require access to technologies such as programmable switches and in-network prioritization, which cloud tenants do not have.

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It is yet to be explored what characteristics of content features from different acoustic models are, and whether integrating multiple content features can help each other.

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topics for computer science research paper

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topics for computer science research paper

Computer Science Research Paper Topics

Almost every element of our lives involves computer science. With the advancement of technology in computer science, the field is constantly changing and generating new research topics in computer science. These research topics seek to answer diverse research questions in computer science and their implications for the tech industry as well as the wider world.

Topics in research on computer science can be classified into various categories like artificial Intelligence, big data, and human-computer interaction, as well as security and privacy and engineering software if you're a college student or researcher in search of computer-related research paper subjects. If that is the case, this article will provide ideas for computing research topics and issues.

What makes a strong Computer Science Research Topic?

A good computer science topic is well-defined, clear, and simple to comprehend. It must also reflect the research's goal as well as its scope, purpose, or objective. Additionally, a solid computer science research subject is free of abbreviations not commonly used, but it may contain industry terms that are widely recognized.

Tips to Select the right Computer Science Research Topic

  • Brainstorm. Brainstorming can help you come up with several ideas and determine the most appropriate subject for you. The most important questions to ask yourself are: What are some questions that you can ask regarding computer science? What are your specific research interests? What are the current technological developments that are happening in computing?
  • Select a sub-field. There are numerous different subfields and career options that are related to computer science. Before you choose a topic for your research, make sure you spell the specific aspect of computer science your research will concentrate on. This could be the theoretical aspect of computer science, current technology, or distributed computing research areas.
  • Aim to answer a question. When selecting a topic for your research within computer science, you must always keep a question in the back of your mind that you'd like to know the answer to. This helps you narrow your research objectives to reach the specified objectives.
  • Conduct a thorough study of the literature. When you are beginning a research undertaking, it is vital that you have a clear understanding of the subject you intend to research. This means conducting a thorough study of the literature to understand what was learned about your subject over time.
  • Make the subject simple and easy to understand. The subject should be reflective of the purpose and scope of the research that it will be addressing. It should be clear and clear of any ambiguous words. Thus, some researchers have suggested that the subject be restricted to 5 to 15 meaningful words. It could take as a question or declaration.

How to Make Strong Computer Science Research Questions

To formulate significant computing research issues, it is essential to first know the subject in question. In addition, the research question must bring new knowledge to the table and aid in the development of the area. It might be a question that hasn't been dealt with previously or has only been partially addressed. It is also crucial to think about the possibility of finding the answer.

100 TOP COMPUTER SCIENCE TOPICS For 2022

Every student knows the challenges that arise from selecting and deciding on a good subject in computer science. In general, a good topic must be original, exciting, fascinating, and demanding. It must push the boundaries of the area of study but still be able to answer the primary questions raised by the research.

We know the anxiety students can experience. This is why we've taken the time to search the internet and print sources to locate the most current computer science subjects that are causing the most excitement within the discipline. Here's a list of the most relevant Computer Science research topic of 2022 that you can use in your senior thesis or essay:

A COMPUTER SCIENCE AP TOPIC FOR STUDENTS ENTERING COLLEGE

  • What impact has big data had on the way small companies carry out market research?
  • Does machine learning have a negative impact on the way that neurons within the brain function?
  • Has biotech changed the way medicines are administered to patients?
  • What is the impact on human perception by technology that simulates reality?
  • What can educators gain from the use of virtual reality in the classroom?
  • Quantum computers are the technology of the future, or is it just another trend?
  • Did the Covid-19 pandemic slow technological advances in computer science?

COMPUTER SCIENCE SURGICAL RESEARCH TOPICS for High School

  • How successful has distance-learning technology been since the age of Covid-19?
  • Can computer-aided companies eliminate the need for customer service?
  • How has the state of the technology of encryption and decryption changed over the past 20 years?
  • Can AI influence the management of computers and make them automatized?
  • Why are programmers hesitant to create an all-purpose programming language?
  • What is the importance of human interactions with computers in the development process?
  • What will the future of computers look like over the coming five to ten years?

CONTROVERSIAL Topics in COMPUTER Science for Grade School Students

  • How can you tell the differences between art and math modeling?
  • What are the effects of big-budget Hollywood films affected by CGI technology?
  • Should students be allowed to utilize technology in classes other than those in comp science?
  • What is the most important thing to do? Restrict our time using social media?
  • Are quantum computers designed for personal or household use real?
  • How are embedded systems transforming the world of business?
  • How can human-computer interaction be enhanced?

Computer Science Capstone Project Ideas for COURSES IN COLLEGE

  • Which are the physical limits of computation and communication?
  • Is the SCRUM method still relevant for software development?
  • Are ATMs still safe machines to withdraw cash, or do they pose a threat?
  • What are the top advantages of making use of free software?
  • What is the future of distributed systems and their use in networks?
  • Does the increase in usage of social networks negatively or positively change our relations?
  • How can machine learning be affected through artificial Intelligence?

INTERESTING Computer Science Topics for College STUDENTS

  • What do you feel Blockchain had an impact on large corporations?
  • Do people need to use internal chips to monitor their pets?
  • How should we pay attention to the information we read on the internet?
  • What are the ways computers can aid the sequencing of human genes?
  • What can we do to improve IT security at banks?
  • What will the digitalization of medical practices mean for the privacy of patients?
  • How effective are backup data strategies in your businesses?

TOPIC HOT TIPS in COMPUTER Science for High School STUDENTS

  • Is distance learning becoming the new standard for earning postgraduate degrees?
  • In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, are more students taking online classes?
  • What role can game theory play in the study of algorithms?
  • What impact will technology have on future elections of government?
  • Why are females underrepresented in the field of computer science?
  • Do the world's largest operating systems collaborate?
  • Is it safe to conduct payments on the internet?

PH.D. RESEARCH TOPICS IN Computer Science for Grade School Students

  • How can technology aid computer-aided professional athletes in increasing their performance?
  • What have Next Gen Stats changed the coach's game plan?
  • What impact has technology from computers had on medical technology?
  • What impact does MatLab software have on the field of medical engineering?
  • What is the impact of self-adaptable applications on the online learning experience?
  • What is the future of the field of information technology?
  • Do we need to be concerned about the dangers of addiction to technology?

Computer Science Research Topics for UNDERGRADUATES

  • What has the impact of online sports betting changed IT requirements in homes?
  • In what ways can computers be used to improve learning?
  • How can learning be improved by interactive multimedia and other similar technology?
  • Which are your psychological implications of IT advances?
  • What is the right balance between high engagement and addiction to video games?
  • How is the world of video gaming evolved over time?
  • Has social media been helpful or detrimental to our habits of communication?

RESURGICAL PAPER TOPICS FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE

  • What is the most crucial technique for planning projects?
  • What has technology done to improve people's odds of winning at bets on sports?
  • What impact has artificial technology had on how it has impacted the U.S. economy?
  • Is there any efficient process for managing projects in IT?
  • What do IT security systems aid in the process of generating fraud scores?
  • Has technology had an influence on the religion of your choice?
  • What is the importance of keeping your online media profiles current?

More COMPUTER SCIENCE RESURGICAL TOPICS FOR PAPERS

  • There isn't a single aspect of human society not affected by AI?
  • How can adaptive learning help professionals in today's world?
  • Do computer programs that were written a decade ago be effective?
  • What has the medical image analysis changed due to IT?
  • What ethical issues are associated with data mining?
  • Should universities and colleges be granted the power to block specific websites?
  • What are the most important elements of computing math?

TOPICS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE THESIS FOR HIGH COLLEGE STUDENTS

  • What can sets and logic be utilized in computing?
  • How has online gambling affected betting in person?
  • What is the impact of the 5G network generation affect the way we communicate?
  • What are the biggest obstacles for IT caused by Covid-19?
  • Do you think assembly language is an innovative method of determining the health of a data mine?
  • What can technology in computers do to assist in locating criminals?

QUICK and EASY PC SCIENCE PROJECT Topics

  • Why do girls and boys learn about technology in different ways?
  • How effective are computer-based education classes geared toward young girls?
  • How can technology impact the way the administration of medicines is done?
  • Are further technological advances likely to result in people being laid off from work?
  • How has computer science impacted the way teachers teach?
  • What do you think are the most efficient methods to stop identity theft?

Excellent Computer Science Thesis Topic Ideas

  • What are the computer-related needs of businesses that computers can address?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of using smart home technology?
  • How will the modernization of computers at the office impact productivity?
  • How has technology enabled computers to lead to the outsourcing of more jobs?
  • Are self-service customer services able to offer solutions?
  • What can a small-scale business do to remain competitive without the latest technology in computer systems?

Computer Science Topics for PRESENTATION

  • What is the future of virtual reality?
  • What are the latest developments in computer science?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of automatizing your daily life?
  • Are hackers really a security threat to our privacy or only to companies?
  • What are the most efficient five methods of storing personal information?
  • Which are the top essential foundations of engineering software?

Some more research topics in COMPUTER SCIENCE

  • In what ways are computers different than human brains?
  • Can global problems be solved by advances in the field of video game technology?
  • What have computers done to aid Human genome mapping?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of designing self-operating vehicles?
  • What has computer science done to help to create genetically modified food?
  • What are the applications of computers in the field of reproductive technologies?

Choosing the Best Computer Science Research Topic

Research in computer science is a broad field, and it isn't easy to pick the right subject. There are a few aspects to think about while making this choice. Pick a subject you are passionate about. This will allow you to stay focused and complete quality research to earn that computer science education.

Pick a topic pertinent to your field of study. This will enable you to develop expertise in the field. Pick a subject with potential for further research. This will guarantee that your research is current and current. Typically, boot camps for coding offer a framework to help streamline the students' work to specific fields, making their quest for a unique solution much easier.

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101 Best Computer Science Topics for 2023

computer science topics

Any student will know the difficulty that comes with developing and choosing a great topic in computer science. Generally speaking, a good topic should be original, interesting, and challenging. It should push the limits of the field of study while still adequately answering the main questions brought on by the study.

We understand the stress that this may cause students, which is why we’ve dedicated our time to search the web and print resources to find the latest computer science topics that create the biggest waves in the field. Here’s the list of the top computer science research topics for 2023 you can use for an essay or senior thesis :

AP Computer Science Topics for Students Entering College

  • How has big data impacted the way small businesses conduct market research?
  • Does machine learning negatively impact the way neurons in the brain work?
  • Did biotech change how medicine is administered to patients?
  • How is human perception affected by virtual reality technologies?
  • How can education benefit from using virtual reality in learning?
  • Are quantum computers the way of the future or are they just a fad?
  • Has the Covid-19 pandemic delayed advancements in computer science?

Computer Science Research Paper Topics for High School

  • How successful has distance learning computer tech been in the time of Covid-19?
  • Will computer assistance in businesses get rid of customer service needs?
  • How has encryption and decryption technology changed in the last 20 years?
  • Can AI impact computer management and make it automated?
  • Why do programmers avoid making a universal programming language?
  • How important are human interactions with computer development?
  • How will computers change in the next five to ten years?

Controversial Topics in Computer Science for Grad Students

  • What is the difference between math modeling and art?
  • How are big-budget Hollywood films being affected by CGI technologies?
  • Should students be allowed to use technology in classrooms other than comp science?
  • How important is it to limit the amount of time we spend using social media?
  • Are quantum computers for personal or home use realistic?
  • How are embedded systems changing the business world?
  • In what ways can human-computer interactions be improved?

Computer Science Capstone Project Ideas for College Courses

  • What are the physical limitations of communication and computation?
  • Is SCRUM methodology still viable for software development?
  • Are ATMs still secure machines to access money or are they a threat?
  • What are the best reasons for using open source software?
  • The future of distributed systems and its use in networks?
  • Has the increased use of social media positively or negatively affected our relationships?
  • How is machine learning impacted by artificial intelligence?

Interesting Computer Science Topics for College Students

  • How has Blockchain impacted large businesses?
  • Should people utilize internal chips to track their pets?
  • How much attention should we pay to the content we read on the web?
  • How can computers help with human genes sequencing?
  • What can be done to enhance IT security in financial institutions?
  • What does the digitization of medical fields mean for patients’ privacy?
  • How efficient are data back-up methods in business?

Hot Topics in Computer Science for High School Students

  • Is distance learning the new norm for earning postgraduate degrees?
  • In reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic should more students take online classes?
  • How can game theory aid in the analysis of algorithms?
  • How can technology impact future government elections?
  • Why are there fewer females in the computer science field?
  • Should the world’s biggest operating systems share information?
  • Is it safe to make financial transactions online?

Ph.D. Research Topics in Computer Science for Grad Students

  • How can computer technology help professional athletes improve performance?
  • How have Next Gen Stats changed the way coaches game plan?
  • How has computer technology impacted medical technology?
  • What impact has MatLab software had in the medical engineering field?
  • How does self-adaptable application impact online learning?
  • What does the future hold for information technology?
  • Should we be worried about addiction to computer technology?

Computer Science Research Topics for Undergraduates

  • How has online sports gambling changed IT needs in households?
  • In what ways have computers changed learning environments?
  • How has learning improved with interactive multimedia and similar technologies?
  • What are the psychological perspectives on IT advancements?
  • What is the balance between high engagement and addiction to video games?
  • How has the video gaming industry changed over the decades?
  • Has social media helped or damaged our communication habits?

Research Paper Topics in Computer Science

  • What is the most important methodology in project planning?
  • How has technology improved people’s chances of winning in sports betting?
  • How has artificial technology impacted the U.S. economy?
  • What are the most effective project management processes in IT?
  • How can IT security systems help the practice of fraud score generation?
  • Has technology had an impact on religion?
  • How important is it to keep your social networking profiles up to date?

More Computer Science Research Papers Topics

  • There is no area of human society that is not impacted by AI?
  • How adaptive learning helps today’s professional world?
  • Does a computer program code from a decade ago still work?
  • How has medical image analysis changed because of IT?
  • What are the ethical concerns that come with data mining?
  • Should colleges and universities have the right to block certain websites?
  • What are the major components of math computing?

Computer Science Thesis Topics for College Students

  • How can logic and sets be used in computing?
  • How has online gambling impacted in-person gambling?
  • How did the 5-G network generation change communication?
  • What are the biggest challenges to IT due to Covid-19?
  • Do you agree that assembly language is a new way to determine data-mine health?
  • How can computer technology help track down criminals?
  • Is facial recognition software a violation of privacy rights?

Quick and Easy Computer Science Project Topics

  • Why do boys and girls learn the technology so differently?
  • How effective are computer training classes that target young girls?
  • How does technology affect how medicines are administered?
  • Will further advancements in technology put people out of work?
  • How has computer science changed the way teachers educate?
  • Which are the most effective ways of fighting identify theft?

Excellent Computer Science Thesis Topic Ideas

  • What are the foreseeable business needs computers will fix?
  • What are the pros and cons of having smart home technology?
  • How does computer modernization at the office affect productivity?
  • How has computer technology led to more job outsourcing?
  • Do self-service customer centers sufficiently provide solutions?
  • How can a small business compete without updated computer products?

Computer Science Presentation Topics

  • What does the future hold for virtual reality?
  • What are the latest innovations in computer science?
  • What are the pros and cons of automating everyday life?
  • Are hackers a real threat to our privacy or just to businesses?
  • What are the five most effective ways of storing personal data?
  • What are the most important fundamentals of software engineering?

Even More Topics in Computer Science

  • In what ways do computers function differently from human brains?
  • Can world problems be solved through advancements in video game technology?
  • How has computing helped with the mapping of the human genome?
  • What are the pros and cons of developing self-operating vehicles?
  • How has computer science helped developed genetically modified foods?
  • How are computers used in the field of reproductive technologies?

Our team of academic experts works around the clock to bring you the best project topics for computer science student. We search hundreds of online articles, check discussion boards, and read through a countless number of reports to ensure our computer science topics are up-to-date and represent the latest issues in the field. If you need assistance developing research topics in computer science or need help editing or writing your assignment, we are available to lend a hand all year. Just send us a message “ help me write my thesis ” and we’ll put you in contact with an academic writer in the field.

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The Top 10 Most Interesting Computer Science Research Topics

Computer science touches nearly every area of our lives. With new advancements in technology, the computer science field is constantly evolving, giving rise to new computer science research topics. These topics attempt to answer various computer science research questions and how they affect the tech industry and the larger world.

Computer science research topics can be divided into several categories, such as artificial intelligence, big data and data science, human-computer interaction, security and privacy, and software engineering. If you are a student or researcher looking for computer research paper topics. In that case, this article provides some suggestions on examples of computer science research topics and questions.

Find your bootcamp match

What makes a strong computer science research topic.

A strong computer science topic is clear, well-defined, and easy to understand. It should also reflect the research’s purpose, scope, or aim. In addition, a strong computer science research topic is devoid of abbreviations that are not generally known, though, it can include industry terms that are currently and generally accepted.

Tips for Choosing a Computer Science Research Topic

  • Brainstorm . Brainstorming helps you develop a few different ideas and find the best topic for you. Some core questions you should ask are, What are some open questions in computer science? What do you want to learn more about? What are some current trends in computer science?
  • Choose a sub-field . There are many subfields and career paths in computer science . Before choosing a research topic, ensure that you point out which aspect of computer science the research will focus on. That could be theoretical computer science, contemporary computing culture, or even distributed computing research topics.
  • Aim to answer a question . When you’re choosing a research topic in computer science, you should always have a question in mind that you’d like to answer. That helps you narrow down your research aim to meet specified clear goals.
  • Do a comprehensive literature review . When starting a research project, it is essential to have a clear idea of the topic you plan to study. That involves doing a comprehensive literature review to better understand what has been learned about your topic in the past.
  • Keep the topic simple and clear. The topic should reflect the scope and aim of the research it addresses. It should also be concise and free of ambiguous words. Hence, some researchers recommended that the topic be limited to five to 15 substantive words. It can take the form of a question or a declarative statement.

What’s the Difference Between a Research Topic and a Research Question?

A research topic is the subject matter that a researcher chooses to investigate. You may also refer to it as the title of a research paper. It summarizes the scope of the research and captures the researcher’s approach to the research question. Hence, it may be broad or more specific. For example, a broad topic may read, Data Protection and Blockchain, while a more specific variant can read, Potential Strategies to Privacy Issues on the Blockchain.

On the other hand, a research question is the fundamental starting point for any research project. It typically reflects various real-world problems and, sometimes, theoretical computer science challenges. As such, it must be clear, concise, and answerable.

How to Create Strong Computer Science Research Questions

To create substantial computer science research questions, one must first understand the topic at hand. Furthermore, the research question should generate new knowledge and contribute to the advancement of the field. It could be something that has not been answered before or is only partially answered. It is also essential to consider the feasibility of answering the question.

Top 10 Computer Science Research Paper Topics

1. battery life and energy storage for 5g equipment.

The 5G network is an upcoming cellular network with much higher data rates and capacity than the current 4G network. According to research published in the European Scientific Institute Journal, one of the main concerns with the 5G network is the high energy consumption of the 5G-enabled devices . Hence, this research on this topic can highlight the challenges and proffer unique solutions to make more energy-efficient designs.

2. The Influence of Extraction Methods on Big Data Mining

Data mining has drawn the scientific community’s attention, especially with the explosive rise of big data. Many research results prove that the extraction methods used have a significant effect on the outcome of the data mining process. However, a topic like this analyzes algorithms. It suggests strategies and efficient algorithms that may help understand the challenge or lead the way to find a solution.

3. Integration of 5G with Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

According to the International Finance Corporation, 5G and AI technologies are defining emerging markets and our world. Through different technologies, this research aims to find novel ways to integrate these powerful tools to produce excellent results. Subjects like this often spark great discoveries that pioneer new levels of research and innovation. A breakthrough can influence advanced educational technology, virtual reality, metaverse, and medical imaging.

4. Leveraging Asynchronous FPGAs for Crypto Acceleration

To support the growing cryptocurrency industry, there is a need to create new ways to accelerate transaction processing. This project aims to use asynchronous Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to accelerate cryptocurrency transaction processing. It explores how various distributed computing technologies can influence mining cryptocurrencies faster with FPGAs and generally enjoy faster transactions.

5. Cyber Security Future Technologies

Cyber security is a trending topic among businesses and individuals, especially as many work teams are going remote. Research like this can stretch the length and breadth of the cyber security and cloud security industries and project innovations depending on the researcher’s preferences. Another angle is to analyze existing or emerging solutions and present discoveries that can aid future research.

6. Exploring the Boundaries Between Art, Media, and Information Technology

The field of computers and media is a vast and complex one that intersects in many ways. They create images or animations using design technology like algorithmic mechanism design, design thinking, design theory, digital fabrication systems, and electronic design automation. This paper aims to define how both fields exist independently and symbiotically.

7. Evolution of Future Wireless Networks Using Cognitive Radio Networks

This research project aims to study how cognitive radio technology can drive evolution in future wireless networks. It will analyze the performance of cognitive radio-based wireless networks in different scenarios and measure its impact on spectral efficiency and network capacity. The research project will involve the development of a simulation model for studying the performance of cognitive radios in different scenarios.

8. The Role of Quantum Computing and Machine Learning in Advancing Medical Predictive Systems

In a paper titled Exploring Quantum Computing Use Cases for Healthcare , experts at IBM highlighted precision medicine and diagnostics to benefit from quantum computing. Using biomedical imaging, machine learning, computational biology, and data-intensive computing systems, researchers can create more accurate disease progression prediction, disease severity classification systems, and 3D Image reconstruction systems vital for treating chronic diseases.

9. Implementing Privacy and Security in Wireless Networks

Wireless networks are prone to attacks, and that has been a big concern for both individual users and organizations. According to the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, cyber security specialists are working to find reliable methods of securing wireless networks . This research aims to develop a secure and privacy-preserving communication framework for wireless communication and social networks.

10. Exploring the Challenges and Potentials of Biometric Systems Using Computational Techniques

Much discussion surrounds biometric systems and the potential for misuse and privacy concerns. When exploring how biometric systems can be effectively used, issues such as verification time and cost, hygiene, data bias, and cultural acceptance must be weighed. The paper may take a critical study into the various challenges using computational tools and predict possible solutions.

Other Examples of Computer Science Research Topics & Questions

Computer research topics.

  • The confluence of theoretical computer science, deep learning, computational algorithms, and performance computing
  • Exploring human-computer interactions and the importance of usability in operating systems
  • Predicting the limits of networking and distributed systems
  • Controlling data mining on public systems through third-party applications
  • The impact of green computing on the environment and computational science

Computer Research Questions

  • Why are there so many programming languages?
  • Is there a better way to enhance human-computer interactions in computer-aided learning?
  • How safe is cloud computing, and what are some ways to enhance security?
  • Can computers effectively assist in the sequencing of human genes?
  • How valuable is SCRUM methodology in Agile software development?

Choosing the Right Computer Science Research Topic

Computer science research is a vast field, and it can be challenging to choose the right topic. There are a few things to keep in mind when making this decision. Choose a topic that you are interested in. This will make it easier to stay motivated and produce high-quality research for your computer science degree .

Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. This will help you to develop specialized knowledge in the area. Choose a topic that has potential for future research. This will ensure that your research is relevant and up-to-date. Typically, coding bootcamps provide a framework that streamlines students’ projects to a specific field, doing their search for a creative solution more effortless.

Computer Science Research Topics FAQ

To start a computer science research project, you should look at what other content is out there. Complete a literature review to know the available findings surrounding your idea. Design your research and ensure that you have the necessary skills and resources to complete the project.

The first step to conducting computer science research is to conceptualize the idea and review existing knowledge about that subject. You will design your research and collect data through surveys or experiments. Analyze your data and build a prototype or graphical model. You will also write a report and present it to a recognized body for review and publication.

You can find computer science research jobs on the job boards of many universities. Many universities have job boards on their websites that list open positions in research and academia. Also, many Slack and GitHub channels for computer scientists provide regular updates on available projects.

There are several hot topics and questions in AI that you can build your research on. Below are some AI research questions you may consider for your research paper.

  • Will it be possible to build artificial emotional intelligence?
  • Will robots replace humans in all difficult cumbersome jobs as part of the progress of civilization?
  • Can artificial intelligence systems self-improve with knowledge from the Internet?

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  • A Research Guide
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30 Interesting Computer Science Research Paper Topics

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  • Biotechnology, medicine, and computer science
  • Neuron networks and machine learning
  • Big data analysis
  • Virtual reality and its connection to human perception
  • The success of computer-assisted education
  • Computer assistance in support services
  • Database architecture and management
  • Human-computer interactions. The importance of usability
  • The limits of computation and communication
  • Computers and media. Where is the line between art and math modeling?
  • Why there are so much programming languages?
  • Digital security versus private information
  • Encrypting and decrypting
  • Quantum computers. Are they the future?
  • Is the evolution of search algorithms finished?
  • The importance of open source software
  • Portable gadgets and the peculiarities of software development for them
  • Cloud storages: advantages and disadvantages
  • Computer viruses: the main principles of work and the hazards
  • DDOS attacks, their danger on the global scale and their prevention
  • Is SCRUM methodology the best-invented one for computer science?
  • The online medicine apps: can they sometimes substitute the treatment of real doctors?
  • 5G Wireless System: is it the future?
  • Windows, macOS, UNIX – what OS is the most perspective now?
  • Biometric systems and recognizing
  • Ethical hacking. Who are the “white hat hackers”?
  • Cyborgs: is it sci-fi or nearest future?
  • The ATM and bank security
  • The evolution of torrents
  • What is blockchain?

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Princeton University

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Suggested Undergraduate Research Topics

topics for computer science research paper

How to Contact Faculty for IW/Thesis Advising

Send the professor an e-mail. When you write a professor, be clear that you want a meeting regarding a senior thesis or one-on-one IW project, and briefly describe the topic or idea that you want to work on. Check the faculty listing for email addresses.

Parastoo Abtahi, Room 419

Available for single-semester IW and senior thesis advising, 2024-2025

  • Research Areas: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Augmented Reality (AR), and Spatial Computing
  • Input techniques for on-the-go interaction (e.g., eye-gaze, microgestures, voice) with a focus on uncertainty, disambiguation, and privacy.
  • Minimal and timely multisensory output (e.g., spatial audio, haptics) that enables users to attend to their physical environment and the people around them, instead of a 2D screen.
  • Interaction with intelligent systems (e.g., IoT, robots) situated in physical spaces with a focus on updating users’ mental model despite the complexity and dynamicity of these systems.

Ryan Adams, Room 411

Research areas:

  • Machine learning driven design
  • Generative models for structured discrete objects
  • Approximate inference in probabilistic models
  • Accelerating solutions to partial differential equations
  • Innovative uses of automatic differentiation
  • Modeling and optimizing 3d printing and CNC machining

Andrew Appel, Room 209

Available for Fall 2024 IW advising, only

  • Research Areas: Formal methods, programming languages, compilers, computer security.
  • Software verification (for which taking COS 326 / COS 510 is helpful preparation)
  • Game theory of poker or other games (for which COS 217 / 226 are helpful)
  • Computer game-playing programs (for which COS 217 / 226)
  •  Risk-limiting audits of elections (for which ORF 245 or other knowledge of probability is useful)

Sanjeev Arora, Room 407

  • Theoretical machine learning, deep learning and its analysis, natural language processing. My advisees would typically have taken a course in algorithms (COS423 or COS 521 or equivalent) and a course in machine learning.
  • Show that finding approximate solutions to NP-complete problems is also NP-complete (i.e., come up with NP-completeness reductions a la COS 487). 
  • Experimental Algorithms: Implementing and Evaluating Algorithms using existing software packages. 
  • Studying/designing provable algorithms for machine learning and implementions using packages like scipy and MATLAB, including applications in Natural language processing and deep learning.
  • Any topic in theoretical computer science.

David August, Room 221

Not available for IW or thesis advising, 2024-2025

  • Research Areas: Computer Architecture, Compilers, Parallelism
  • Containment-based approaches to security:  We have designed and tested a simple hardware+software containment mechanism that stops incorrect communication resulting from faults, bugs, or exploits from leaving the system.   Let's explore ways to use containment to solve real problems.  Expect to work with corporate security and technology decision-makers.
  • Parallelism: Studies show much more parallelism than is currently realized in compilers and architectures.  Let's find ways to realize this parallelism.
  • Any other interesting topic in computer architecture or compilers. 

Mark Braverman, 194 Nassau St., Room 231

  • Research Areas: computational complexity, algorithms, applied probability, computability over the real numbers, game theory and mechanism design, information theory.
  • Topics in computational and communication complexity.
  • Applications of information theory in complexity theory.
  • Algorithms for problems under real-life assumptions.
  • Game theory, network effects
  • Mechanism design (could be on a problem proposed by the student)

Sebastian Caldas, 221 Nassau Street, Room 105

  • Research Areas: collaborative learning, machine learning for healthcare. Typically, I will work with students that have taken COS324.
  • Methods for collaborative and continual learning.
  • Machine learning for healthcare applications.

Bernard Chazelle, 194 Nassau St., Room 301

  • Research Areas: Natural Algorithms, Computational Geometry, Sublinear Algorithms. 
  • Natural algorithms (flocking, swarming, social networks, etc).
  • Sublinear algorithms
  • Self-improving algorithms
  • Markov data structures

Danqi Chen, Room 412

  • My advisees would be expected to have taken a course in machine learning and ideally have taken COS484 or an NLP graduate seminar.
  • Representation learning for text and knowledge bases
  • Pre-training and transfer learning
  • Question answering and reading comprehension
  • Information extraction
  • Text summarization
  • Any other interesting topics related to natural language understanding/generation

Marcel Dall'Agnol, Corwin 034

  • Research Areas: Theoretical computer science. (Specifically, quantum computation, sublinear algorithms, complexity theory, interactive proofs and cryptography)
  • Research Areas: Machine learning

Jia Deng, Room 423

  •  Research Areas: Computer Vision, Machine Learning.
  • Object recognition and action recognition
  • Deep Learning, autoML, meta-learning
  • Geometric reasoning, logical reasoning

Adji Bousso Dieng, Room 406

  • Research areas: Vertaix is a research lab at Princeton University led by Professor Adji Bousso Dieng. We work at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and the natural sciences. The models and algorithms we develop are motivated by problems in those domains and contribute to advancing methodological research in AI. We leverage tools in statistical machine learning and deep learning in developing methods for learning with the data, of various modalities, arising from the natural sciences.

Robert Dondero, Corwin Hall, Room 038

  • Research Areas:  Software engineering; software engineering education.
  • Develop or evaluate tools to facilitate student learning in undergraduate computer science courses at Princeton, and beyond.
  • In particular, can code critiquing tools help students learn about software quality?

Zeev Dvir, 194 Nassau St., Room 250

  • Research Areas: computational complexity, pseudo-randomness, coding theory and discrete mathematics.
  • Independent Research: I have various research problems related to Pseudorandomness, Coding theory, Complexity and Discrete mathematics - all of which require strong mathematical background. A project could also be based on writing a survey paper describing results from a few theory papers revolving around some particular subject.

Benjamin Eysenbach, Room 416

  • Research areas: reinforcement learning, machine learning. My advisees would typically have taken COS324.
  • Using RL algorithms to applications in science and engineering.
  • Emergent behavior of RL algorithms on high-fidelity robotic simulators.
  • Studying how architectures and representations can facilitate generalization.

Christiane Fellbaum, 1-S-14 Green

  • Research Areas: theoretical and computational linguistics, word sense disambiguation, lexical resource construction, English and multilingual WordNet(s), ontology
  • Anything having to do with natural language--come and see me with/for ideas suitable to your background and interests. Some topics students have worked on in the past:
  • Developing parsers, part-of-speech taggers, morphological analyzers for underrepresented languages (you don't have to know the language to develop such tools!)
  • Quantitative approaches to theoretical linguistics questions
  • Extensions and interfaces for WordNet (English and WN in other languages),
  • Applications of WordNet(s), including:
  • Foreign language tutoring systems,
  • Spelling correction software,
  • Word-finding/suggestion software for ordinary users and people with memory problems,
  • Machine Translation 
  • Sentiment and Opinion detection
  • Automatic reasoning and inferencing
  • Collaboration with professors in the social sciences and humanities ("Digital Humanities")

Adam Finkelstein, Room 424 

  • Research Areas: computer graphics, audio.

Robert S. Fish, Corwin Hall, Room 037

  • Networking and telecommunications
  • Learning, perception, and intelligence, artificial and otherwise;
  • Human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work
  • Online education, especially in Computer Science Education
  • Topics in research and development innovation methodologies including standards, open-source, and entrepreneurship
  • Distributed autonomous organizations and related blockchain technologies

Michael Freedman, Room 308 

  • Research Areas: Distributed systems, security, networking
  • Projects related to streaming data analysis, datacenter systems and networks, untrusted cloud storage and applications. Please see my group website at http://sns.cs.princeton.edu/ for current research projects.

Ruth Fong, Room 032

  • Research Areas: computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, interpretability, explainable AI, fairness and bias in AI
  • Develop a technique for understanding AI models
  • Design a AI model that is interpretable by design
  • Build a paradigm for detecting and/or correcting failure points in an AI model
  • Analyze an existing AI model and/or dataset to better understand its failure points
  • Build a computer vision system for another domain (e.g., medical imaging, satellite data, etc.)
  • Develop a software package for explainable AI
  • Adapt explainable AI research to a consumer-facing problem

Note: I am happy to advise any project if there's a sufficient overlap in interest and/or expertise; please reach out via email to chat about project ideas.

Tom Griffiths, Room 405

Available for Fall 2024 single-semester IW advising, only

Research areas: computational cognitive science, computational social science, machine learning and artificial intelligence

Note: I am open to projects that apply ideas from computer science to understanding aspects of human cognition in a wide range of areas, from decision-making to cultural evolution and everything in between. For example, we have current projects analyzing chess game data and magic tricks, both of which give us clues about how human minds work. Students who have expertise or access to data related to games, magic, strategic sports like fencing, or other quantifiable domains of human behavior feel free to get in touch.

Aarti Gupta, Room 220

  • Research Areas: Formal methods, program analysis, logic decision procedures
  • Finding bugs in open source software using automatic verification tools
  • Software verification (program analysis, model checking, test generation)
  • Decision procedures for logical reasoning (SAT solvers, SMT solvers)

Elad Hazan, Room 409  

  • Research interests: machine learning methods and algorithms, efficient methods for mathematical optimization, regret minimization in games, reinforcement learning, control theory and practice
  • Machine learning, efficient methods for mathematical optimization, statistical and computational learning theory, regret minimization in games.
  • Implementation and algorithm engineering for control, reinforcement learning and robotics
  • Implementation and algorithm engineering for time series prediction

Felix Heide, Room 410

  • Research Areas: Computational Imaging, Computer Vision, Machine Learning (focus on Optimization and Approximate Inference).
  • Optical Neural Networks
  • Hardware-in-the-loop Holography
  • Zero-shot and Simulation-only Learning
  • Object recognition in extreme conditions
  • 3D Scene Representations for View Generation and Inverse Problems
  • Long-range Imaging in Scattering Media
  • Hardware-in-the-loop Illumination and Sensor Optimization
  • Inverse Lidar Design
  • Phase Retrieval Algorithms
  • Proximal Algorithms for Learning and Inference
  • Domain-Specific Language for Optics Design

Peter Henderson , 302 Sherrerd Hall

  • Research Areas: Machine learning, law, and policy

Kyle Jamieson, Room 306

  • Research areas: Wireless and mobile networking; indoor radar and indoor localization; Internet of Things
  • See other topics on my independent work  ideas page  (campus IP and CS dept. login req'd)

Alan Kaplan, 221 Nassau Street, Room 105

Research Areas:

  • Random apps of kindness - mobile application/technology frameworks used to help individuals or communities; topic areas include, but are not limited to: first response, accessibility, environment, sustainability, social activism, civic computing, tele-health, remote learning, crowdsourcing, etc.
  • Tools automating programming language interoperability - Java/C++, React Native/Java, etc.
  • Software visualization tools for education
  • Connected consumer devices, applications and protocols

Brian Kernighan, Room 311

  • Research Areas: application-specific languages, document preparation, user interfaces, software tools, programming methodology
  • Application-oriented languages, scripting languages.
  • Tools; user interfaces
  • Digital humanities

Zachary Kincaid, Room 219

  • Research areas: programming languages, program analysis, program verification, automated reasoning
  • Independent Research Topics:
  • Develop a practical algorithm for an intractable problem (e.g., by developing practical search heuristics, or by reducing to, or by identifying a tractable sub-problem, ...).
  • Design a domain-specific programming language, or prototype a new feature for an existing language.
  • Any interesting project related to programming languages or logic.

Gillat Kol, Room 316

Aleksandra korolova, 309 sherrerd hall.

  • Research areas: Societal impacts of algorithms and AI; privacy; fair and privacy-preserving machine learning; algorithm auditing.

Advisees typically have taken one or more of COS 226, COS 324, COS 423, COS 424 or COS 445.

Pravesh Kothari, Room 320

  • Research areas: Theory

Amit Levy, Room 307

  • Research Areas: Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Embedded Systems, Internet of Things
  • Distributed hardware testing infrastructure
  • Second factor security tokens
  • Low-power wireless network protocol implementation
  • USB device driver implementation

Kai Li, Room 321

  • Research Areas: Distributed systems; storage systems; content-based search and data analysis of large datasets.
  • Fast communication mechanisms for heterogeneous clusters.
  • Approximate nearest-neighbor search for high dimensional data.
  • Data analysis and prediction of in-patient medical data.
  • Optimized implementation of classification algorithms on manycore processors.

Xiaoyan Li, 221 Nassau Street, Room 104

  • Research areas: Information retrieval, novelty detection, question answering, AI, machine learning and data analysis.
  • Explore new statistical retrieval models for document retrieval and question answering.
  • Apply AI in various fields.
  • Apply supervised or unsupervised learning in health, education, finance, and social networks, etc.
  • Any interesting project related to AI, machine learning, and data analysis.

Lydia Liu, Room 414

  • Research Areas: algorithmic decision making, machine learning and society
  • Theoretical foundations for algorithmic decision making (e.g. mathematical modeling of data-driven decision processes, societal level dynamics)
  • Societal impacts of algorithms and AI through a socio-technical lens (e.g. normative implications of worst case ML metrics, prediction and model arbitrariness)
  • Machine learning for social impact domains, especially education (e.g. responsible development and use of LLMs for education equity and access)
  • Evaluation of human-AI decision making using statistical methods (e.g. causal inference of long term impact)

Wyatt Lloyd, Room 323

  • Research areas: Distributed Systems
  • Caching algorithms and implementations
  • Storage systems
  • Distributed transaction algorithms and implementations

Alex Lombardi , Room 312

  • Research Areas: Theory

Margaret Martonosi, Room 208

  • Quantum Computing research, particularly related to architecture and compiler issues for QC.
  • Computer architectures specialized for modern workloads (e.g., graph analytics, machine learning algorithms, mobile applications
  • Investigating security and privacy vulnerabilities in computer systems, particularly IoT devices.
  • Other topics in computer architecture or mobile / IoT systems also possible.

Jonathan Mayer, Sherrerd Hall, Room 307 

Available for Spring 2025 single-semester IW, only

  • Research areas: Technology law and policy, with emphasis on national security, criminal procedure, consumer privacy, network management, and online speech.
  • Assessing the effects of government policies, both in the public and private sectors.
  • Collecting new data that relates to government decision making, including surveying current business practices and studying user behavior.
  • Developing new tools to improve government processes and offer policy alternatives.

Mae Milano, Room 307

  • Local-first / peer-to-peer systems
  • Wide-ares storage systems
  • Consistency and protocol design
  • Type-safe concurrency
  • Language design
  • Gradual typing
  • Domain-specific languages
  • Languages for distributed systems

Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Room 405

  • Research Areas: Human-Computer Interaction, Social Computing, Public-Interest Technology, Augmented Reality, Urban Computing
  • Research interests:developing public-interest socio-technical systems.  We are currently creating alternatives to gig work platforms that are more equitable for all stakeholders. For instance, we are investigating the socio-technical affordances necessary to support a co-op food delivery network owned and managed by workers and restaurants. We are exploring novel system designs that support self-governance, decentralized/federated models, community-centered data ownership, and portable reputation systems.  We have opportunities for students interested in human-centered computing, UI/UX design, full-stack software development, and qualitative/quantitative user research.
  • Beyond our core projects, we are open to working on research projects that explore the use of emerging technologies, such as AR, wearables, NFTs, and DAOs, for creative and out-of-the-box applications.

Christopher Moretti, Corwin Hall, Room 036

  • Research areas: Distributed systems, high-throughput computing, computer science/engineering education
  • Expansion, improvement, and evaluation of open-source distributed computing software.
  • Applications of distributed computing for "big science" (e.g. biometrics, data mining, bioinformatics)
  • Software and best practices for computer science education and study, especially Princeton's 126/217/226 sequence or MOOCs development
  • Sports analytics and/or crowd-sourced computing

Radhika Nagpal, F316 Engineering Quadrangle

  • Research areas: control, robotics and dynamical systems

Karthik Narasimhan, Room 422

  • Research areas: Natural Language Processing, Reinforcement Learning
  • Autonomous agents for text-based games ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/textworld/ )
  • Transfer learning/generalization in NLP
  • Techniques for generating natural language
  • Model-based reinforcement learning

Arvind Narayanan, 308 Sherrerd Hall 

Research Areas: fair machine learning (and AI ethics more broadly), the social impact of algorithmic systems, tech policy

Pedro Paredes, Corwin Hall, Room 041

My primary research work is in Theoretical Computer Science.

 * Research Interest: Spectral Graph theory, Pseudorandomness, Complexity theory, Coding Theory, Quantum Information Theory, Combinatorics.

The IW projects I am interested in advising can be divided into three categories:

 1. Theoretical research

I am open to advise work on research projects in any topic in one of my research areas of interest. A project could also be based on writing a survey given results from a few papers. Students should have a solid background in math (e.g., elementary combinatorics, graph theory, discrete probability, basic algebra/calculus) and theoretical computer science (226 and 240 material, like big-O/Omega/Theta, basic complexity theory, basic fundamental algorithms). Mathematical maturity is a must.

A (non exhaustive) list of topics of projects I'm interested in:   * Explicit constructions of better vertex expanders and/or unique neighbor expanders.   * Construction deterministic or random high dimensional expanders.   * Pseudorandom generators for different problems.   * Topics around the quantum PCP conjecture.   * Topics around quantum error correcting codes and locally testable codes, including constructions, encoding and decoding algorithms.

 2. Theory informed practical implementations of algorithms   Very often the great advances in theoretical research are either not tested in practice or not even feasible to be implemented in practice. Thus, I am interested in any project that consists in trying to make theoretical ideas applicable in practice. This includes coming up with new algorithms that trade some theoretical guarantees for feasible implementation yet trying to retain the soul of the original idea; implementing new algorithms in a suitable programming language; and empirically testing practical implementations and comparing them with benchmarks / theoretical expectations. A project in this area doesn't have to be in my main areas of research, any theoretical result could be suitable for such a project.

Some examples of areas of interest:   * Streaming algorithms.   * Numeric linear algebra.   * Property testing.   * Parallel / Distributed algorithms.   * Online algorithms.    3. Machine learning with a theoretical foundation

I am interested in projects in machine learning that have some mathematical/theoretical, even if most of the project is applied. This includes topics like mathematical optimization, statistical learning, fairness and privacy.

One particular area I have been recently interested in is in the area of rating systems (e.g., Chess elo) and applications of this to experts problems.

Final Note: I am also willing to advise any project with any mathematical/theoretical component, even if it's not the main one; please reach out via email to chat about project ideas.

Iasonas Petras, Corwin Hall, Room 033

  • Research Areas: Information Based Complexity, Numerical Analysis, Quantum Computation.
  • Prerequisites: Reasonable mathematical maturity. In case of a project related to Quantum Computation a certain familiarity with quantum mechanics is required (related courses: ELE 396/PHY 208).
  • Possible research topics include:

1.   Quantum algorithms and circuits:

  • i. Design or simulation quantum circuits implementing quantum algorithms.
  • ii. Design of quantum algorithms solving/approximating continuous problems (such as Eigenvalue problems for Partial Differential Equations).

2.   Information Based Complexity:

  • i. Necessary and sufficient conditions for tractability of Linear and Linear Tensor Product Problems in various settings (for example worst case or average case). 
  • ii. Necessary and sufficient conditions for tractability of Linear and Linear Tensor Product Problems under new tractability and error criteria.
  • iii. Necessary and sufficient conditions for tractability of Weighted problems.
  • iv. Necessary and sufficient conditions for tractability of Weighted Problems under new tractability and error criteria.

3. Topics in Scientific Computation:

  • i. Randomness, Pseudorandomness, MC and QMC methods and their applications (Finance, etc)

Yuri Pritykin, 245 Carl Icahn Lab

  • Research interests: Computational biology; Cancer immunology; Regulation of gene expression; Functional genomics; Single-cell technologies.
  • Potential research projects: Development, implementation, assessment and/or application of algorithms for analysis, integration, interpretation and visualization of multi-dimensional data in molecular biology, particularly single-cell and spatial genomics data.

Benjamin Raphael, Room 309  

  • Research interests: Computational biology and bioinformatics; Cancer genomics; Algorithms and machine learning approaches for analysis of large-scale datasets
  • Implementation and application of algorithms to infer evolutionary processes in cancer
  • Identifying correlations between combinations of genomic mutations in human and cancer genomes
  • Design and implementation of algorithms for genome sequencing from new DNA sequencing technologies
  • Graph clustering and network anomaly detection, particularly using diffusion processes and methods from spectral graph theory

Vikram Ramaswamy, 035 Corwin Hall

  • Research areas: Interpretability of AI systems, Fairness in AI systems, Computer vision.
  • Constructing a new method to explain a model / create an interpretable by design model
  • Analyzing a current model / dataset to understand bias within the model/dataset
  • Proposing new fairness evaluations
  • Proposing new methods to train to improve fairness
  • Developing synthetic datasets for fairness / interpretability benchmarks
  • Understanding robustness of models

Ran Raz, Room 240

  • Research Area: Computational Complexity
  • Independent Research Topics: Computational Complexity, Information Theory, Quantum Computation, Theoretical Computer Science

Szymon Rusinkiewicz, Room 406

  • Research Areas: computer graphics; computer vision; 3D scanning; 3D printing; robotics; documentation and visualization of cultural heritage artifacts
  • Research ways of incorporating rotation invariance into computer visiontasks such as feature matching and classification
  • Investigate approaches to robust 3D scan matching
  • Model and compensate for imperfections in 3D printing
  • Given a collection of small mobile robots, apply control policies learned in simulation to the real robots.

Olga Russakovsky, Room 408

  • Research Areas: computer vision, machine learning, deep learning, crowdsourcing, fairness&bias in AI
  • Design a semantic segmentation deep learning model that can operate in a zero-shot setting (i.e., recognize and segment objects not seen during training)
  • Develop a deep learning classifier that is impervious to protected attributes (such as gender or race) that may be erroneously correlated with target classes
  • Build a computer vision system for the novel task of inferring what object (or part of an object) a human is referring to when pointing to a single pixel in the image. This includes both collecting an appropriate dataset using crowdsourcing on Amazon Mechanical Turk, creating a new deep learning formulation for this task, and running extensive analysis of both the data and the model

Sebastian Seung, Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Room 153

  • Research Areas: computational neuroscience, connectomics, "deep learning" neural networks, social computing, crowdsourcing, citizen science
  • Gamification of neuroscience (EyeWire  2.0)
  • Semantic segmentation and object detection in brain images from microscopy
  • Computational analysis of brain structure and function
  • Neural network theories of brain function

Jaswinder Pal Singh, Room 324

  • Research Areas: Boundary of technology and business/applications; building and scaling technology companies with special focus at that boundary; parallel computing systems and applications: parallel and distributed applications and their implications for software and architectural design; system software and programming environments for multiprocessors.
  • Develop a startup company idea, and build a plan/prototype for it.
  • Explore tradeoffs at the boundary of technology/product and business/applications in a chosen area.
  • Study and develop methods to infer insights from data in different application areas, from science to search to finance to others. 
  • Design and implement a parallel application. Possible areas include graphics, compression, biology, among many others. Analyze performance bottlenecks using existing tools, and compare programming models/languages.
  • Design and implement a scalable distributed algorithm.

Mona Singh, Room 420

  • Research Areas: computational molecular biology, as well as its interface with machine learning and algorithms.
  • Whole and cross-genome methods for predicting protein function and protein-protein interactions.
  • Analysis and prediction of biological networks.
  • Computational methods for inferring specific aspects of protein structure from protein sequence data.
  • Any other interesting project in computational molecular biology.

Robert Tarjan, 194 Nassau St., Room 308

  • Research Areas: Data structures; graph algorithms; combinatorial optimization; computational complexity; computational geometry; parallel algorithms.
  • Implement one or more data structures or combinatorial algorithms to provide insight into their empirical behavior.
  • Design and/or analyze various data structures and combinatorial algorithms.

Olga Troyanskaya, Room 320

  • Research Areas: Bioinformatics; analysis of large-scale biological data sets (genomics, gene expression, proteomics, biological networks); algorithms for integration of data from multiple data sources; visualization of biological data; machine learning methods in bioinformatics.
  • Implement and evaluate one or more gene expression analysis algorithm.
  • Develop algorithms for assessment of performance of genomic analysis methods.
  • Develop, implement, and evaluate visualization tools for heterogeneous biological data.

David Walker, Room 211

  • Research Areas: Programming languages, type systems, compilers, domain-specific languages, software-defined networking and security
  • Independent Research Topics:  Any other interesting project that involves humanitarian hacking, functional programming, domain-specific programming languages, type systems, compilers, software-defined networking, fault tolerance, language-based security, theorem proving, logic or logical frameworks.

Shengyi Wang, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Room 216

Available for Fall 2024 single-semester IW, only

  • Independent Research topics: Explore Escher-style tilings using (introductory) group theory and automata theory to produce beautiful pictures.

Kevin Wayne, Corwin Hall, Room 040

  • Research Areas: design, analysis, and implementation of algorithms; data structures; combinatorial optimization; graphs and networks.
  • Design and implement computer visualizations of algorithms or data structures.
  • Develop pedagogical tools or programming assignments for the computer science curriculum at Princeton and beyond.
  • Develop assessment infrastructure and assessments for MOOCs.

Matt Weinberg, 194 Nassau St., Room 222

  • Research Areas: algorithms, algorithmic game theory, mechanism design, game theoretical problems in {Bitcoin, networking, healthcare}.
  • Theoretical questions related to COS 445 topics such as matching theory, voting theory, auction design, etc. 
  • Theoretical questions related to incentives in applications like Bitcoin, the Internet, health care, etc. In a little bit more detail: protocols for these systems are often designed assuming that users will follow them. But often, users will actually be strictly happier to deviate from the intended protocol. How should we reason about user behavior in these protocols? How should we design protocols in these settings?

Huacheng Yu, Room 310

  • data structures
  • streaming algorithms
  • design and analyze data structures / streaming algorithms
  • prove impossibility results (lower bounds)
  • implement and evaluate data structures / streaming algorithms

Ellen Zhong, Room 314

Opportunities outside the department.

We encourage students to look in to doing interdisciplinary computer science research and to work with professors in departments other than computer science.  However, every CS independent work project must have a strong computer science element (even if it has other scientific or artistic elements as well.)  To do a project with an adviser outside of computer science you must have permission of the department.  This can be accomplished by having a second co-adviser within the computer science department or by contacting the independent work supervisor about the project and having he or she sign the independent work proposal form.

Here is a list of professors outside the computer science department who are eager to work with computer science undergraduates.

Maria Apostolaki, Engineering Quadrangle, C330

  • Research areas: Computing & Networking, Data & Information Science, Security & Privacy

Branko Glisic, Engineering Quadrangle, Room E330

  • Documentation of historic structures
  • Cyber physical systems for structural health monitoring
  • Developing virtual and augmented reality applications for documenting structures
  • Applying machine learning techniques to generate 3D models from 2D plans of buildings
  •  Contact : Rebecca Napolitano, rkn2 (@princeton.edu)

Mihir Kshirsagar, Sherrerd Hall, Room 315

Center for Information Technology Policy.

  • Consumer protection
  • Content regulation
  • Competition law
  • Economic development
  • Surveillance and discrimination

Sharad Malik, Engineering Quadrangle, Room B224

Select a Senior Thesis Adviser for the 2020-21 Academic Year.

  • Design of reliable hardware systems
  • Verifying complex software and hardware systems

Prateek Mittal, Engineering Quadrangle, Room B236

  • Internet security and privacy 
  • Social Networks
  • Privacy technologies, anonymous communication
  • Network Science
  • Internet security and privacy: The insecurity of Internet protocols and services threatens the safety of our critical network infrastructure and billions of end users. How can we defend end users as well as our critical network infrastructure from attacks?
  • Trustworthy social systems: Online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter have revolutionized the way our society communicates. How can we leverage social connections between users to design the next generation of communication systems?
  • Privacy Technologies: Privacy on the Internet is eroding rapidly, with businesses and governments mining sensitive user information. How can we protect the privacy of our online communications? The Tor project (https://www.torproject.org/) is a potential application of interest.

Ken Norman,  Psychology Dept, PNI 137

  • Research Areas: Memory, the brain and computation 
  • Lab:  Princeton Computational Memory Lab

Potential research topics

  • Methods for decoding cognitive state information from neuroimaging data (fMRI and EEG) 
  • Neural network simulations of learning and memory

Caroline Savage

Office of Sustainability, Phone:(609)258-7513, Email: cs35 (@princeton.edu)

The  Campus as Lab  program supports students using the Princeton campus as a living laboratory to solve sustainability challenges. The Office of Sustainability has created a list of campus as lab research questions, filterable by discipline and topic, on its  website .

An example from Computer Science could include using  TigerEnergy , a platform which provides real-time data on campus energy generation and consumption, to study one of the many energy systems or buildings on campus. Three CS students used TigerEnergy to create a  live energy heatmap of campus .

Other potential projects include:

  • Apply game theory to sustainability challenges
  • Develop a tool to help visualize interactions between complex campus systems, e.g. energy and water use, transportation and storm water runoff, purchasing and waste, etc.
  • How can we learn (in aggregate) about individuals’ waste, energy, transportation, and other behaviors without impinging on privacy?

Janet Vertesi, Sociology Dept, Wallace Hall, Room 122

  • Research areas: Sociology of technology; Human-computer interaction; Ubiquitous computing.
  • Possible projects: At the intersection of computer science and social science, my students have built mixed reality games, produced artistic and interactive installations, and studied mixed human-robot teams, among other projects.

David Wentzlaff, Engineering Quadrangle, Room 228

Computing, Operating Systems, Sustainable Computing.

  • Instrument Princeton's Green (HPCRC) data center
  • Investigate power utilization on an processor core implemented in an FPGA
  • Dismantle and document all of the components in modern electronics. Invent new ways to build computers that can be recycled easier.
  • Other topics in parallel computer architecture or operating systems

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Hiring CS Graduates: What We Learned from Employers

Computer science ( CS ) majors are in high demand and account for a large part of national computer and information technology job market applicants. Employment in this sector is projected to grow 12% between 2018 and 2028, which is faster than the average of all other occupations. Published data are available on traditional non-computer science-specific hiring processes. However, the hiring process for CS majors may be different. It is critical to have up-to-date information on questions such as “what positions are in high demand for CS majors?,” “what is a typical hiring process?,” and “what do employers say they look for when hiring CS graduates?” This article discusses the analysis of a survey of 218 recruiters hiring CS graduates in the United States. We used Atlas.ti to analyze qualitative survey data and report the results on what positions are in the highest demand, the hiring process, and the resume review process. Our study revealed that a software developer was the most common job the recruiters were looking to fill. We found that the hiring process steps for CS graduates are generally aligned with traditional hiring steps, with an additional emphasis on technical and coding tests. Recruiters reported that their hiring choices were based on reviewing resume’s experience, GPA, and projects sections. The results provide insights into the hiring process, decision making, resume analysis, and some discrepancies between current undergraduate CS program outcomes and employers’ expectations.

A Systematic Literature Review of Empiricism and Norms of Reporting in Computing Education Research Literature

Context. Computing Education Research (CER) is critical to help the computing education community and policy makers support the increasing population of students who need to learn computing skills for future careers. For a community to systematically advance knowledge about a topic, the members must be able to understand published work thoroughly enough to perform replications, conduct meta-analyses, and build theories. There is a need to understand whether published research allows the CER community to systematically advance knowledge and build theories. Objectives. The goal of this study is to characterize the reporting of empiricism in Computing Education Research literature by identifying whether publications include content necessary for researchers to perform replications, meta-analyses, and theory building. We answer three research questions related to this goal: (RQ1) What percentage of papers in CER venues have some form of empirical evaluation? (RQ2) Of the papers that have empirical evaluation, what are the characteristics of the empirical evaluation? (RQ3) Of the papers that have empirical evaluation, do they follow norms (both for inclusion and for labeling of information needed for replication, meta-analysis, and, eventually, theory-building) for reporting empirical work? Methods. We conducted a systematic literature review of the 2014 and 2015 proceedings or issues of five CER venues: Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE TS), International Symposium on Computing Education Research (ICER), Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE), ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), and Computer Science Education (CSE). We developed and applied the CER Empiricism Assessment Rubric to the 427 papers accepted and published at these venues over 2014 and 2015. Two people evaluated each paper using the Base Rubric for characterizing the paper. An individual person applied the other rubrics to characterize the norms of reporting, as appropriate for the paper type. Any discrepancies or questions were discussed between multiple reviewers to resolve. Results. We found that over 80% of papers accepted across all five venues had some form of empirical evaluation. Quantitative evaluation methods were the most frequently reported. Papers most frequently reported results on interventions around pedagogical techniques, curriculum, community, or tools. There was a split in papers that had some type of comparison between an intervention and some other dataset or baseline. Most papers reported related work, following the expectations for doing so in the SIGCSE and CER community. However, many papers were lacking properly reported research objectives, goals, research questions, or hypotheses; description of participants; study design; data collection; and threats to validity. These results align with prior surveys of the CER literature. Conclusions. CER authors are contributing empirical results to the literature; however, not all norms for reporting are met. We encourage authors to provide clear, labeled details about their work so readers can use the study methodologies and results for replications and meta-analyses. As our community grows, our reporting of CER should mature to help establish computing education theory to support the next generation of computing learners.

Light Diacritic Restoration to Disambiguate Homographs in Modern Arabic Texts

Diacritic restoration (also known as diacritization or vowelization) is the process of inserting the correct diacritical markings into a text. Modern Arabic is typically written without diacritics, e.g., newspapers. This lack of diacritical markings often causes ambiguity, and though natives are adept at resolving, there are times they may fail. Diacritic restoration is a classical problem in computer science. Still, as most of the works tackle the full (heavy) diacritization of text, we, however, are interested in diacritizing the text using a fewer number of diacritics. Studies have shown that a fully diacritized text is visually displeasing and slows down the reading. This article proposes a system to diacritize homographs using the least number of diacritics, thus the name “light.” There is a large class of words that fall under the homograph category, and we will be dealing with the class of words that share the spelling but not the meaning. With fewer diacritics, we do not expect any effect on reading speed, while eye strain is reduced. The system contains morphological analyzer and context similarities. The morphological analyzer is used to generate all word candidates for diacritics. Then, through a statistical approach and context similarities, we resolve the homographs. Experimentally, the system shows very promising results, and our best accuracy is 85.6%.

A genre-based analysis of questions and comments in Q&A sessions after conference paper presentations in computer science

Gender diversity in computer science at a large public r1 research university: reporting on a self-study.

With the number of jobs in computer occupations on the rise, there is a greater need for computer science (CS) graduates than ever. At the same time, most CS departments across the country are only seeing 25–30% of women students in their classes, meaning that we are failing to draw interest from a large portion of the population. In this work, we explore the gender gap in CS at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, a large public R1 research university, using three data sets that span thousands of students across six academic years. Specifically, we combine these data sets to study the gender gaps in four core CS courses and explore the correlation of several factors with retention and the impact of these factors on changes to the gender gap as students proceed through the CS courses toward completing the CS major. For example, we find that a significant percentage of women students taking the introductory CS1 course for majors do not intend to major in CS, which may be a contributing factor to a large increase in the gender gap immediately after CS1. This finding implies that part of the retention task is attracting these women students to further explore the major. Results from our study include both novel findings and findings that are consistent with known challenges for increasing gender diversity in CS. In both cases, we provide extensive quantitative data in support of the findings.

Designing for Student-Directedness: How K–12 Teachers Utilize Peers to Support Projects

Student-directed projects—projects in which students have individual control over what they create and how to create it—are a promising practice for supporting the development of conceptual understanding and personal interest in K–12 computer science classrooms. In this article, we explore a central (and perhaps counterintuitive) design principle identified by a group of K–12 computer science teachers who support student-directed projects in their classrooms: in order for students to develop their own ideas and determine how to pursue them, students must have opportunities to engage with other students’ work. In this qualitative study, we investigated the instructional practices of 25 K–12 teachers using a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews to develop understandings of how they used peer work to support student-directed projects in their classrooms. Teachers described supporting their students in navigating three stages of project development: generating ideas, pursuing ideas, and presenting ideas. For each of these three stages, teachers considered multiple factors to encourage engagement with peer work in their classrooms, including the quality and completeness of shared work and the modes of interaction with the work. We discuss how this pedagogical approach offers students new relationships to their own learning, to their peers, and to their teachers and communicates important messages to students about their own competence and agency, potentially contributing to aims within computer science for broadening participation.

Creativity in CS1: A Literature Review

Computer science is a fast-growing field in today’s digitized age, and working in this industry often requires creativity and innovative thought. An issue within computer science education, however, is that large introductory programming courses often involve little opportunity for creative thinking within coursework. The undergraduate introductory programming course (CS1) is notorious for its poor student performance and retention rates across multiple institutions. Integrating opportunities for creative thinking may help combat this issue by adding a personal touch to course content, which could allow beginner CS students to better relate to the abstract world of programming. Research on the role of creativity in computer science education (CSE) is an interesting area with a lot of room for exploration due to the complexity of the phenomenon of creativity as well as the CSE research field being fairly new compared to some other education fields where this topic has been more closely explored. To contribute to this area of research, this article provides a literature review exploring the concept of creativity as relevant to computer science education and CS1 in particular. Based on the review of the literature, we conclude creativity is an essential component to computer science, and the type of creativity that computer science requires is in fact, a teachable skill through the use of various tools and strategies. These strategies include the integration of open-ended assignments, large collaborative projects, learning by teaching, multimedia projects, small creative computational exercises, game development projects, digitally produced art, robotics, digital story-telling, music manipulation, and project-based learning. Research on each of these strategies and their effects on student experiences within CS1 is discussed in this review. Last, six main components of creativity-enhancing activities are identified based on the studies about incorporating creativity into CS1. These components are as follows: Collaboration, Relevance, Autonomy, Ownership, Hands-On Learning, and Visual Feedback. The purpose of this article is to contribute to computer science educators’ understanding of how creativity is best understood in the context of computer science education and explore practical applications of creativity theory in CS1 classrooms. This is an important collection of information for restructuring aspects of future introductory programming courses in creative, innovative ways that benefit student learning.

CATS: Customizable Abstractive Topic-based Summarization

Neural sequence-to-sequence models are the state-of-the-art approach used in abstractive summarization of textual documents, useful for producing condensed versions of source text narratives without being restricted to using only words from the original text. Despite the advances in abstractive summarization, custom generation of summaries (e.g., towards a user’s preference) remains unexplored. In this article, we present CATS, an abstractive neural summarization model that summarizes content in a sequence-to-sequence fashion while also introducing a new mechanism to control the underlying latent topic distribution of the produced summaries. We empirically illustrate the efficacy of our model in producing customized summaries and present findings that facilitate the design of such systems. We use the well-known CNN/DailyMail dataset to evaluate our model. Furthermore, we present a transfer-learning method and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a low resource setting, i.e., abstractive summarization of meetings minutes, where combining the main available meetings’ transcripts datasets, AMI and International Computer Science Institute(ICSI) , results in merely a few hundred training documents.

Exploring students’ and lecturers’ views on collaboration and cooperation in computer science courses - a qualitative analysis

Factors affecting student educational choices regarding oer material in computer science, export citation format, share document.

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40 Compelling Computer Science Research Topics: A Guide for Every Researcher

Emma W.

Table of contents

Ever thought about the geniuses behind computer science? Think of names like Alan Turing or Grace Hopper. They too once wondered where to start in this vast field.

Choosing a research paper topic in computer science can be overwhelming. Should you dive into algorithms? Explore the future with quantum computing? Or tackle the big questions of AI ethics?

Don't worry. This article has got you covered. We'll guide you through 40 exciting topics to kickstart your research journey. Ready? Let's dive in.

Beginner-Level Research Paper Topics

Starting with research might seem daunting. But every expert was once a beginner. Here are some beginner-friendly topics to ease you in.

1. Evolution of Computer Programming Languages :

Ever wondered how we moved from simple codes to complex programming languages? Dive into their history.

2. Basics and Importance of Data Structures :

Like building blocks for kids, data structures are the building blocks of programming. Why are they so important?

3. Understanding Computer Graphics and Its Applications :

From video games to animated movies, computer graphics make them come alive. How do they work?

4. The Role of Operating Systems in Modern Computing :

Your computer’s brain is its operating system. What role does it play and why does it matter?

5. Fundamentals of Internet Protocols :

Ever thought about how computers talk to each other online? That's where internet protocols come in.

Starting with simpler topics can be a great way to build confidence. Once you're comfortable, you can delve into more intricate areas of computer science. Remember, every step counts in the journey of research.

Intermediate-Level Topics (requires a foundational understanding of CS concepts)

Ready to dive a bit deeper? Once you've gotten your feet wet with beginner topics, these intermediate ones offer a little more challenge. Let's explore!

6. Introduction to Machine Learning and its Applications :

You hear about machines learning and making decisions. But how? This topic dives into the tech behind smart machines.

7. Ethical Implications of Artificial Intelligence :

AI is powerful. But with power comes responsibility. Explore the ethical side of these smart systems.

8. Cryptography and Data Security Basics :

Online shopping, emails, chats - how do they stay private? It's all about the science of secret codes.

9. Cloud Computing and Its Evolution :

Ever saved photos or documents 'to the cloud'? Discover what's behind this virtual storage magic.

10. Social Media Algorithms and User Behavior :

Why do you see certain posts on your feed? Dive into the algorithms that shape our online experiences.

11. Quantum Computing: An Overview :

Imagine computers unimaginably faster than today's best. That's quantum computing. Ready to explore?

12. The Future of Augmented and Virtual Reality :

From VR games to AR apps on phones, these techs are changing our reality. How do they work and where are they headed?

13. Introduction to Natural Language Processing :

Ever chatted with a virtual assistant? Uncover the tech that helps machines understand human language.

14. The Rise of E-Commerce Platforms: A Technical Perspective :

Online shopping is more than just cart and checkout. Discover the tech behind these platforms.

15. Challenges in Mobile App Development :

There's an app for everything. But creating them isn't easy. Dive into the challenges developers face.

Intermediate topics bridge the gap between basics and advanced areas. They provide a foundation that will help you take on even more complex subjects in the future. Happy exploring!

Advanced-Level Topics (for those seeking a challenge)

Feeling confident? Great! It's time to take on the heavy hitters. These advanced topics dive into deeper waters of computer science. Dive in if you're up for a thrilling challenge.

16. Deep Learning and Neural Network Architectures :

Machines that think like humans? Almost. Explore how deep learning mimics the human brain.

17. Advanced Cryptography and Quantum Security :

In an era of cyber threats, how do we level up our defense? Unravel the next-gen secret codes.

18. Biocomputing and Its Potential :

Mix biology with computing and what do you get? Dive into this unique blend for futuristic solutions.

19. The Internet of Things (IoT) and Future Smart Cities :

Your fridge talking to your phone? Uncover the web of connected devices shaping our smart cities.

20. Human-AI Collaboration in Modern Workspaces :

Robots and humans, working side by side? Discover the future of collaborative workspaces.

21. Edge Computing and Future Internet Architectures :

Beyond the cloud, there's the edge. Explore how computing is getting closer to data sources.

22. The Role of Blockchain Beyond Cryptocurrencies :

Bitcoin is just the beginning. Dive into how blockchain is reshaping more than just money.

23. Advanced Algorithms in Bioinformatics :

When biology meets computer science, magic happens. Delve into the algorithms decoding life's mysteries.

24. Robotics and Autonomy in the 21st Century :

Robots are no longer sci-fi. Explore their rise and the tech making them smarter.

25. High-Performance Computing and Its Challenges :

Crunching big data at lightning speeds. Discover the world of supercomputers and their challenges.

Tackling these topics requires grit, but the rewards are immense. With every challenge conquered, you'll be one step closer to mastering the vast universe of computer science. Dive deep, and let curiosity be your guide!

Cutting-Edge Topics (topics at the forefront of current research trends)

Ready to be on the cutting edge? These topics are at the forefront of today's tech research. If you're eager to explore where the future of computer science is headed, this section is your launchpad.

26. Zero-Shot Learning in Artificial Intelligence :

Training machines without direct examples? It's not fiction. Explore this new frontier in AI.

27. Post-Quantum Cryptography :

With quantum computers on the rise, how do we keep data safe? Dive into the next era of encryption.

28. Neuralink and Brain-Computer Interfaces :

Merging the mind with machines. Discover how tech can directly interface with our brains.

29. Sustainable Computing and Green IT Solutions :

Tech that's kind to the planet? Uncover the drive towards eco-friendly computing solutions.

30. Generative Adversarial Networks in Content Creation :

From fake photos to art, machines are becoming creators. Delve into the tech behind it.

31. Federated Learning and Data Privacy :

Training AI without compromising data privacy? Explore the breakthroughs making it possible.

32. Synthetic Media and Deepfakes :

Videos that aren't what they seem. Dive into the tech that's blurring reality.

33. Autonomous Vehicle Networks and Smart Traffic :

Cars that talk to each other? Discover the future of traffic without jams.

34. Mixed Reality and New-age User Experiences :

Beyond VR and AR, there's mixed reality. Explore this blend of digital and physical worlds.

35. Decentralized Web and Its Potential :

A web without central control? Unravel the possibilities of a decentralized internet.

Being at the cutting edge means diving into uncharted waters, exploring the unknown, and possibly shaping the future of tech. Gear up, and let these topics inspire your next big discovery!

Theoretical Foundations (topics with a strong theoretical base)

Love diving deep into the core principles that underpin the tech world? These topics in theoretical foundations are for those who enjoy the abstract, logical, and foundational aspects of computer science. They might be challenging, but they're also profoundly rewarding.

36. P vs NP Problem and Its Implications :

One of computer science's biggest mysteries. What happens if P equals NP, or if it doesn't? Dive in.

37. Quantum Algorithms and Their Potential :

The quantum realm offers new ways to compute. Discover algorithms that might redefine computing.

38. The Church-Turing Thesis Revisited :

What are the limits of computation? Explore this foundational idea and its modern interpretations.

39. Computational Complexity in Modern Algorithms :

Why are some problems harder for computers? Delve into the study of problem-solving efficiency.

40. Theory of Computation and Future Machines :

What can machines truly achieve? Venture into the abstract world that determines the boundaries of computing.

Theoretical concepts might seem detached from practical applications at first glance. Yet, they are the bedrock upon which all innovations are built. By understanding them, you get a deeper appreciation for the magic behind every tech breakthrough. Dive in and let the theories inspire you!

The world of computer science is as vast as it is fascinating. From the foundational principles that shape our understanding of computation to the cutting-edge innovations that redefine what's possible, every topic offers a unique journey of discovery.

As a budding researcher, the path you choose is up to you. Whether you're starting with the basics, diving into advanced concepts, or exploring the theoretical underpinnings of the field, there's always something new to learn and explore.

If you ever feel the need for guidance or professional assistance on your research journey, consider reaching out to pro research paper writing service like Writers Per Hour. They have a team of experts ready to support and elevate your writing to new heights.

Remember, every great mind in computer science, from Turing to Hopper, started with a single question, a single topic. So pick a subject that resonates with you, delve deep, and let your curiosity guide you to new horizons. The future of computer science awaits, and who knows? You might just be the next visionary to shape it.

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Technology and Computer Science Research Topics

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Table of contents

  • 1 Research Ideas on Technologies & Computer Science
  • 2 Actual Topics in Computer Science
  • 3 Genetic Engineering Technologies
  • 4 Data Science and Programming Languages
  • 5 Natural Language Processing Research Topics
  • 6 Health Technologies
  • 7 Biotechnology
  • 8 Communications and Media
  • 9 Energy Power Technologies
  • 10 Medical Devices Diagnostics
  • 11 Pharmaceutical Technologies
  • 12 Data Security Research Paper Topics
  • 13 Food Technology
  • 14 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Paper Topics
  • 15 Transportation Technologies
  • 16 Computer Science Engineering
  • 17 Final Thoughts

Whether you’re looking for technology topics for high school students or college and university attendees, your options are endless. But what is the reason for having so many academic notions you can explore? The answer cannot be more straightforward: technology undergoes constant change. Moreover, some advancements have seen unprecedented growth that technology can’t keep up with the pace.

Most breakthroughs benefit humanity, the animal world, and the planet. However, some inventions have had a negative impact regardless of their initial purpose. Hence, learners have infinite interesting information technology topics to investigate during their academic careers. Tech is the root of all knowledge, from biotechnology and genetics to alternative resources and transportation.

Most students are at liberty to select their preferred technology topic while they are dealing with the task to write my paper . Alternatively, the professor might ask learners to dedicate their work to a specific subject. Whatever the case, choosing a project that could have a favorable effect on humans is vital. Addressing controversial or prospective issues is also a plus in the writing process of articles.

Overall, educators appreciate the effort of selecting appealing ideas that draw worthy conclusions in the respective areas. To help you choose a relevant concept, we list some of the most promising talking points today. Keep reading to find out the best research topics about technology and science.

Research Ideas on Technologies & Computer Science

As discussed, computers are the future of all human ventures, and no sector can move forward without the perks they bring. Hence, essay topics about technology have come at the forefront of numerous discussions for several years. Moreover, the suggested science and technology topics for middle school are ideal for college students, too.

Though some subject matters are more conventional, others are controversial and bound to capture any audience. Undoubtedly, one will probably grab your attention and make for an exceptional project paper. Your articles should include ideas from print and online resources for maximum impact.

  • Will cryptocurrencies change financial systems, or it’s just a temporary buzz?
  • What is the most impactful technological invention in the 21st century?
  • The upsides and downsides of entertainment technology
  • How does the Internet of things affect people’s attention span?
  • Digital vs. print reading – what are the differences?
  • Traditional researching skills today: essential or irrelevant
  • How is virtual reality changing education?
  • What technologies use humans to explore the universe?
  • Do technical advancements oppose nature and turn humans into zombies?
  • Critical problems technology solves while creating other gaps.

Actual Topics in Computer Science

As the field of computer science evolves rapidly, it presents an array of trendy topics that are particularly relevant for computer science students. This list features ten topics encompassing the breadth of contemporary computer science research areas.

  • Exploring the potential of quantum computing in solving complex problems.
  • Advances in cyber-physical systems: blending the digital and physical worlds.
  • The rise of green computing: strategies for energy-efficient technology.
  • Innovations in 5G technology and its transformative impact.
  • Blockchain for secure digital identity management in a digital world.
  • The evolution of cloud computing: from storage to cloud-native applications.
  • Cryptocurrency technology: understanding blockchain’s backbone.
  • Advances in virtual and augmented reality for healthcare applications.
  • Big data analytics in environmental conservation efforts.
  • The future of robotics: ethical considerations and societal impacts.

Genetic Engineering Technologies

Genetics examines how traits and information transfer from parents to their offspring. As a result, it is a popular technology discipline in many universities worldwide. Moreover, discoveries in the field have seen tremendous progress over the past few decades, so students find these ideas subject super-appealing.

Advanced knowledge about DNA and genes impacts almost all segments of life. Hence, technology topics for research are versatile, and the discovery process is a great pleasure for all fans of genetics. Below are some of the most intriguing dilemmas you can elaborate on:

  • Is human cloning taking God’s place?
  • What features make human beings irreplaceable?
  • The extent to which humankind should control genetics
  • Genetic diseases cured – what are the prospects?
  • Understanding GE and gene therapy technology
  • The perks and risks of engineering genetic information
  • Should parents order genetically perfect children?
  • Confidentiality of genetic codes and testing
  • Is our DNA still evolving, or have we reached our biological peak?
  • Does genetics impact homosexuality?

Data Science and Programming Languages

In the realms of data science and programming languages, constant innovation and exploration are key. For students and professionals in technology and computer science, understanding these evolving areas is crucial.

  • Rust programming for data-intensive applications: safety and performance.
  • Python’s role in emerging machine learning frameworks and libraries.
  • Data visualization in R: trends and new libraries.
  • Real-time big data processing with Scala and Spark.
  • Julia language for high-performance numerical computing.
  • Go in cloud-native development: efficiency and scalability.
  • Kotlin’s impact on Android app development efficiency.
  • Advances in time-series data analysis with Python.
  • Exploring functional programming in data science with Haskell.
  • JavaScript and D3.js for interactive data visualization in web development.

Natural Language Processing Research Topics

In the dynamic field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), researchers and technologists are continuously exploring new frontiers. This list delves into cutting-edge topics within NLP, ranging from ethical considerations in social media monitoring to the creative applications of AI in literature and art. These topics not only represent the current state of NLP research but also point towards future directions in this ever-evolving field.

  • Analyzing NLP’s ethical issues in monitoring tweets for privacy intrusions.
  • Developing NLP tools for rare languages: overcoming data scarcity.
  • NLP in diagnosing neurological disorders from patient speech patterns.
  • Using NLP to identify political bias in online news sources.
  • Leveraging NLP for real-time customer feedback analysis in retail.
  • Advancing NLP with audio-visual data for enhanced language models.
  • NLP-driven adaptive learning platforms for customized educational content.
  • Challenges in NLP for detecting sarcasm in online customer reviews.
  • Improving speech recognition for the hearing impaired with NLP.
  • NLP in generating narrative poetry: pushing AI creative boundaries.

Health Technologies

From root causes of diseases to new treatments, health researchers have limitless options for headway. Undoubtedly, healthcare has become an increasingly appealing area for students. Developments in medical technology and preventive and personalized medicine prove these trends.

This field is also critical if you prefer social science topics for research papers. To do so, check the invaluable insight below.

  • Revealing the most significant health technologies
  • Genetic advances in autism spectrum disorders
  • Can information technology make people fit and healthy without any effort?
  • The philosophy of organ donation
  • The ethics of using animal tissues in people
  • Can disabled people lead an ordinary human life with virtual reality?
  • How can modern gadgets impact mental health?
  • Cloud technologies for data management in healthcare
  • Robots alter healthcare sector perceptions
  • Do new technologies lead to an unhealthy lifestyle?

Biotechnology

As a result of modifying the DNA of various products, biotechnology aims to solve imminent issues and make beneficial products. Its reach is all-encompassing and addresses some of the most challenging agricultural, marine, and ecological concerns.

Breakthroughs in biotechnology have gone so far that it allows humans to prevent or cure untreatable diseases. Whatever research topic you pick from the ideas below, prepare to set off on an exciting journey of discoveries.

  • The immune response to stem cell therapy
  • Can microchip implantation tackle COVID-19?
  • Biotechnology can help remove pollutants from the soil
  • Restoring biodiversity using tools and technology
  • Exploiting photovoltaics to produce crops in the ocean
  • Enhancing vitamin levels in genetically modified foods
  • Tacking food allergies at the source
  • Advantages and limitations of whole-genome sequencing
  • The elimination of heat-resistant microorganisms with ultraviolet rays
  • Can pesticides contribute to cancer diagnostics?

Communications and Media

The way people communicate and share news has undergone drastic changes with the birth of the Internet and advanced technology. The growth of multiple media channels also contributes to enhanced educational and business opportunities. People can easily interact virtually, work remotely, and even build their entire careers online.

Yet, social media, communication tools, and apps have inherent risks, too. Check the following examples of communications and media affairs that could make an excellent research paper:

  • The timeline of virtual connections in the 21st century
  • Is the future of communication bright?
  • The Internet craze and privacy concerns
  • Mass media morality and reliability in times of crisis
  • Media etiquette in communication
  • Media censoring: Are we all suffering the consequences?
  • The severe impact of social media exposure on adolescents
  • Virtual communication and personal socialization
  • Social media as an advertising tool
  • Is freedom of speech harmful?

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Energy Power Technologies

Power technologies have long been the focus of research and at the forefront of pioneering solutions. Hydrogen-based energy is one of the most promising technology branches that strive to eradicate fossil fuels. Similarly, scientists are working on new-generation smart grids that track data in real-time and achieve maximum energy use.

Electricity generation is another exciting research project. Besides wind, solar, and hydro energy, the latest trends include power production from tides, photovoltaics, and second-generation biofuels.

Refer to our list of paper topics on energy and power technologies to get an idea of where to start digging. Hopefully, your results will be fruitful and solve a problem millions of people struggle with daily.

  • Will alternative energy sources replace oil and coal?
  • Hydrogen energy can set the pace in the future
  • From waste to energy: novel technologies
  • Smart grids can prevent electricity loss and waste
  • Advances in nuclear power engineering
  • Can smart energy combat climate change?
  • 3D printed solar-powered trees
  • Current trends in tidal power
  • The prospects of biofuels and algae
  • Advanced renewable energy technologies

Medical Devices Diagnostics

Have you ever wondered why life expectancy has plummeted over the last few decades? Where did all those deadly diseases like polio and malaria go? Thanks to the numerous innovations in the medical sphere, humans can now cross new boundaries.

For instance, medical devices help save the lives of many people. Advanced equipment and new insight into robotic prosthetics assist even handicapped individuals. Finally, artificial organs can soon become the pinnacle of human knowledge.

Thanks to emerging technologies, operations can now get performed by robots remotely controlled by doctors. Surgeries become highly precise and non-invasive. Plus, medical workers can enjoy enhanced structure and share electronic medical records.

So, if your mission is to save lives, articles in medical technology are food for thought. Consider the ideas below if you wonder how to make a research title that stands out!

  • Wearable gadgets and their impact on human health
  • Can we rely on robotic surgical procedures?
  • Artificial organs are the new frontier
  • New ways of asthma treatment with smart inhalers
  • How can computers rehabilitate individuals with lost limbs?
  • VR devices and machine learning for educational purposes
  • The use of technology to control and alter genetics
  • How can digital reading devices assist people with disabilities?
  • Brain-computer interfaces – an overview
  • 3D printing can reduce medical expenses

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Pharmaceutical Technologies

The pharmaceutical industry has undergone unprecedented growth in recent times. Processes have become automated and medication distribution optimized. Prescribing drugs is more expeditious due to real-time pharmacy, and patients get personalized treatments.

More so, the production technology of medicines itself has changed. Specialty drugs can treat chronic diseases successfully, and nanomedicine has promising clinical results. Yet, there is always room for development. To keep up with the latest pharma trends, consider these highly intriguing and information-packed subject matters in pharmaceutical technologies:

  • Data safety in medication therapy management
  • Can prescription drug monitoring programs fight drug abuse?
  • Is real-time pharmacy beneficial for patients?
  • Health outcomes of cannabis for HIV-positive people
  • The vaccine era – advantages and disadvantages
  • Antibiotics or superbugs: compare and contrast
  • The prospects of personalized medicine: organs-on-chip systems
  • Cannabidiol use in pain management
  • Can cloud technology trends upscale small pharmaceutical companies?
  • Potential applications of plant-derived medicines
  • Smart cancer nanomedicine: the future of pharmacology

Data Security Research Paper Topics

In an era where data is increasingly valuable and vulnerable, the field of data security stands at the forefront of technological innovation and challenge. This list features ten unique and current topics within data security, each pinpointing a specific area of interest and concern.

  • Blockchain technology in securing digital transactions and records.
  • Quantum cryptography: the future of unbreakable data encryption.
  • AI-driven threat detection systems in cybersecurity.
  • Ethical hacking: proactive strategies for system security.
  • IoT device security in the age of connected technologies.
  • Cloud storage security: challenges and advancements.
  • Biometric authentication methods and privacy concerns.
  • Deep learning applications in detecting phishing attacks.
  • Protecting data privacy in big data analytics.
  • Zero trust architecture: redefining network access and security.

Food Technology

The demand for food is gradually increasing, and humanity has to find new methods to grow and produce foodstuff. In addition, manufacturers struggle to incorporate novel processing and packaging techniques that pollute less and require fewer resources. And while technological developments have given us tools to thrive, other methods damage the environment.

For example, embracing robots and computers into production makes the process cost-efficient and highly secure. Factories get to optimize resources and deliver supplies on time. Similarly, farmers can monitor their crops with the help of drones and do what’s necessary.

Scholars looking for qualitative topics in the food industry should give this list considerable thought. Or look for assistance if you wonder how to pay someone to write my paper on a short note.

  • How can robots enhance food safety?
  • The use of drones in agriculture
  • How can micro packaging become our future?
  • The food waste challenge: can technology help?
  • Leveraging food technology to fight obesity
  • GMO vs. organic food – which one is more beneficial?
  • How can technology address global food shortages?
  • Conventional or hydroponic farming: compare and contrast
  • Can food-borne diseases get eradicated with biotechnology?
  • Are polyphenols in food harmful, and how to reduce their intake?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Paper Topics

In the ever-evolving landscape of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the scope of research expands continually, encompassing a myriad of novel and significant domains. This list presents contemporary topics within AI, each shedding light on different facets of the field.

  • Evolving AI ethics: balancing innovation with societal impacts.
  • Quantum computing’s influence on AI algorithm efficiency.
  • AI-driven climate change models: predicting future scenarios.
  • Enhancing AI interpretability for transparent decision-making.
  • AI in precision agriculture: optimizing crop yield and resources.
  • Neurosymbolic AI: merging deep learning with symbolic reasoning.
  • AI in autonomous vehicle navigation: addressing complex scenarios.
  • AI-powered personalized medicine: transforming patient care.
  • Developing AI for space exploration: navigating extraterrestrial environments.
  • AI in cybersecurity: predictive threat detection and response.

Transportation Technologies

The future of transport seems bright, but the path has been thorny. Besides trying to conceive faster and more convenient transportation, we must also consider ecological problems. To this end, humanity made a giant leap forward toward electric and self-driving vehicles.

With technology at its peak, transport undergoes drastic changes for improved safety and reduced traffic jams. Innovative solutions include vehicle-sharing apps, electric buses, and trams. Even private cars, scooters, and bikes are on the rise.

If you prefer exploring more intriguing science, technology and society topics, dive deeper into the world of teleportation and water-fueled vehicles. The suggestions on transportation technologies outlined below will surely give you one hell of a ride!

  • Hybrid or electric cars: which one has a brighter future?
  • Safety concerns with self-driving cars
  • How do advanced GPS devices work and adjust traffic routes?
  • Solar-powered cars are an all-in-one solution
  • Automobile technology on a quest to save the environment
  • Are personal transportation pods just a fantasy?
  • Is teleportation possible: open ways and constraints
  • The challenges with electric scooters
  • Use of artificial intelligence in delivery companies
  • Can we put our trust in water-fueled cars: possibility or dream?

Computer Science Engineering

Somebody needs to care for the machine’s brain, too, right? That’s where computer scientists that work with algorithms and programming languages come into play.

Research topics in computer science divide into three sub-fields. The first one involves math, the second focuses on software engineering, while the third deals with natural sciences. Whatever subject you pick for your academic paper, you can’t go wrong as the future lies here.

As for trends, AI and VR are probably the predominant ones in recent years. Big data and metadata also offer endless growth opportunities. Last, cybersecurity is taking the lion’s share in the Digital Age.

Whether you are up for a speech or an engineer looking for a potential thesis, here are a few leading notions in computer sciences:

  • The limitless potential of virtual and augmented reality
  • Can blockchain technology enhance algorithmic regulations?
  • Why can high-dimensional data be troublesome?
  • Machine control over air defense systems
  • The endless possibilities of cloud computing
  • The many ways AI can impact the future of work
  • From wireless sensor networks to cyber-physical systems
  • The upsides and downsides of gaming among teenagers
  • Computational thinking can affect scientific information
  • Most reliable cryptographic protocols

Final Thoughts

This overview is an ultimate compilation of 110 appealing computer science topics. Anyone keen on deepening their knowledge in this respect will find our list a perfect inspiration source.

We made an effort to include the most relevant technology research topics for high school students. And to ease your paper work, we divided the suggested topics by study fields. With ten interesting technology topics in each category and a brief explanation of the trends, everyone can find their niche. Of course, you can always use the help of our  online paper writer and ease this task for you.

If you’re keen on medicine, opt for a biotechnology, genetics, or diagnostics subject. For tech addicts, a topic on AI, robotics, and computers will be the ideal choice. Finally, make the world a better place by selecting a project on renewable energy, transport, food, or pharmaceuticals. Maybe your technological invention will vest the power to embark on new journeys.

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topics for computer science research paper

Computer Technology Research Paper Topics

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This list of computer technology research paper topics  provides the list of 33 potential topics for research papers and an overview article on the history of computer technology.

1. Analog Computers

Paralleling the split between analog and digital computers, in the 1950s the term analog computer was a posteriori projected onto pre-existing classes of mechanical, electrical, and electromechanical computing artifacts, subsuming them under the same category. The concept of analog, like the technical demarcation between analog and digital computer, was absent from the vocabulary of those classifying artifacts for the 1914 Edinburgh Exhibition, the first world’s fair emphasizing computing technology, and this leaves us with an invaluable index of the impressive number of classes of computing artifacts amassed during the few centuries of capitalist modernity. True, from the debate between ‘‘smooth’’ and ‘‘lumpy’’ artificial lines of computing (1910s) to the differentiation between ‘‘continuous’’ and ‘‘cyclic’’ computers (1940s), the subsequent analog–digital split became possible by the multitudinous accumulation of attempts to decontextualize the computer from its socio-historical use alternately to define the ideal computer technically. The fact is, however, that influential classifications of computing technology from the previous decades never provided an encompassing demarcation compared to the analog– digital distinction used since the 1950s. Historians of the digital computer find that the experience of working with software was much closer to art than science, a process that was resistant to mass production; historians of the analog computer find this to have been typical of working with the analog computer throughout all its aspects. The historiography of the progress of digital computing invites us to turn to the software crisis, which perhaps not accidentally, surfaced when the crisis caused by the analog ended. Noticeably, it was not until the process of computing with a digital electronic computer became sufficiently visual by the addition of a special interface—to substitute for the loss of visualization that was previously provided by the analog computer—that the analog computer finally disappeared.

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Get 10% off with 24start discount code, 2. artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the field of software engineering that builds computer systems and occasionally robots to perform tasks that require intelligence. The term ‘‘artificial intelligence’’ was coined by John McCarthy in 1958, then a graduate student at Princeton, at a summer workshop held at Dartmouth in 1956. This two-month workshop marks the official birth of AI, which brought together young researchers who would nurture the field as it grew over the next several decades: Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, Arthur Samuel, Ray Solomonoff, Oliver Selfridge, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon. It would be difficult to argue that the technologies derived from AI research had a profound effect on our way of life by the beginning of the 21st century. However, AI technologies have been successfully applied in many industrial settings, medicine and health care, and video games. Programming techniques developed in AI research were incorporated into more widespread programming practices, such as high-level programming languages and time-sharing operating systems. While AI did not succeed in constructing a computer which displays the general mental capabilities of a typical human, such as the HAL computer in Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, it has produced programs that perform some apparently intelligent tasks, often at a much greater level of skill and reliability than humans. More than this, AI has provided a powerful and defining image of what computer technology might someday be capable of achieving.

3. Computer and Video Games

Interactive computer and video games were first developed in laboratories as the late-night amusements of computer programmers or independent projects of television engineers. Their formats include computer software; networked, multiplayer games on time-shared systems or servers; arcade consoles; home consoles connected to television sets; and handheld game machines. The first experimental projects grew out of early work in computer graphics, artificial intelligence, television technology, hardware and software interface development, computer-aided education, and microelectronics. Important examples were Willy Higinbotham’s oscilloscope-based ‘‘Tennis for Two’’ at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (1958); ‘‘Spacewar!,’’ by Steve Russell, Alan Kotok, J. Martin Graetz and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1962); Ralph Baer’s television-based tennis game for Sanders Associates (1966); several networked games from the PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) Project at the University of Illinois during the early 1970s; and ‘‘Adventure,’’ by Will Crowther of Bolt, Beranek & Newman (1972), extended by Don Woods at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (1976). The main lines of development during the 1970s and early 1980s were home video consoles, coin-operated arcade games, and computer software.

4. Computer Displays

The display is an essential part of any general-purpose computer. Its function is to act as an output device to communicate data to humans using the highest bandwidth input system that humans possess—the eyes. Much of the development of computer displays has been about trying to get closer to the limits of human visual perception in terms of color and spatial resolution. Mainframe and minicomputers used ‘‘terminals’’ to display the output. These were fed data from the host computer and processed the data to create screen images using a graphics processor. The display was typically integrated with a keyboard system and some communication hardware as a terminal or video display unit (VDU) following the basic model used for teletypes. Personal computers (PCs) in the late 1970s and early 1980s changed this model by integrating the graphics controller into the computer chassis itself. Early PC displays typically displayed only monochrome text and communicated in character codes such as ASCII. Line-scanning frequencies were typically from 15 to 20 kilohertz—similar to television. CRT displays rapidly developed after the introduction of video graphics array (VGA) technology (640 by 480 pixels in16 colors) in the mid-1980s and scan frequencies rose to 60 kilohertz or more for mainstream displays; 100 kilohertz or more for high-end displays. These displays were capable of displaying formats up to 2048 by 1536 pixels with high color depths. Because the human eye is very quick to respond to visual stimulation, developments in display technology have tended to track the development of semiconductor technology that allows the rapid manipulation of the stored image.

5. Computer Memory for Personal Computers

During the second half of the twentieth century, the two primary methods used for the long-term storage of digital information were magnetic and optical recording. These methods were selected primarily on the basis of cost. Compared to core or transistorized random-access memory (RAM), storage costs for magnetic and optical media were several orders of magnitude cheaper per bit of information and were not volatile; that is, the information did not vanish when electrical power was turned off. However, access to information stored on magnetic and optical recorders was much slower compared to RAM memory. As a result, computer designers used a mix of both types of memory to accomplish computational tasks. Designers of magnetic and optical storage systems have sought meanwhile to increase the speed of access to stored information to increase the overall performance of computer systems, since most digital information is stored magnetically or optically for reasons of cost.

6. Computer Modeling

Computer simulation models have transformed the natural, engineering, and social sciences, becoming crucial tools for disciplines as diverse as ecology, epidemiology, economics, urban planning, aerospace engineering, meteorology, and military operations. Computer models help researchers study systems of extreme complexity, predict the behavior of natural phenomena, and examine the effects of human interventions in natural processes. Engineers use models to design everything from jets and nuclear-waste repositories to diapers and golf clubs. Models enable astrophysicists to simulate supernovas, biochemists to replicate protein folding, geologists to predict volcanic eruptions, and physiologists to identify populations at risk of lead poisoning. Clearly, computer models provide a powerful means of solving problems, both theoretical and applied.

7. Computer Networks

Computers and computer networks have changed the way we do almost everything—the way we teach, learn, do research, access or share information, communicate with each other, and even the way we entertain ourselves. A computer network, in simple terms, consists of two or more computing devices (often called nodes) interconnected by means of some medium capable of transmitting data that allows the computers to communicate with each other in order to provide a variety of services to users.

8. Computer Science

Computer science occupies a unique position among the scientific and technical disciplines. It revolves around a specific artifact—the electronic digital computer—that touches upon a broad and diverse set of fields in its design, operation, and application. As a result, computer science represents a synthesis and extension of many different areas of mathematics, science, engineering, and business.

9. Computer-Aided Control Technology

The story of computer-aided control technology is inextricably entwined with the modern history of automation. Automation in the first half of the twentieth century involved (often analog) processes for continuous automatic measurement and control of hardware by hydraulic, mechanical, or electromechanical means. These processes facilitated the development and refinement of battlefield fire-control systems, feedback amplifiers for use in telephony, electrical grid simulators, numerically controlled milling machines, and dozens of other innovations.

10. Computer-Aided Design and Manufacture

Computer-aided design and manufacture, known by the acronym CAD/CAM, is a process for manufacturing mechanical components, wherein computers are used to link the information needed in and produced by the design process to the information needed to control the machine tools that produce the parts. However, CAD/CAM actually constitutes two separate technologies that developed along similar, but unrelated, lines until they were combined in the 1970s.

11. Computer-User Interface

A computer interface is the point of contact between a person and an electronic computer. Today’s interfaces include a keyboard, mouse, and display screen. Computer user interfaces developed through three distinct stages, which can be identified as batch processing, interactive computing, and the graphical user interface (GUI). Today’s graphical interfaces support additional multimedia features, such as streaming audio and video. In GUI design, every new software feature introduces more icons into the process of computer– user interaction. Presently, the large vocabulary of icons used in GUI design is difficult for users to remember, which creates a complexity problem. As GUIs become more complex, interface designers are adding voice recognition and intelligent agent technologies to make computer user interfaces even easier to operate.

12. Early Computer Memory

Mechanisms to store information were present in early mechanical calculating machines, going back to Charles Babbage’s analytical engine proposed in the 1830s. It introduced the concept of the ‘‘store’’ and, if ever built, would have held 1000 numbers of up to 50 decimal digits. However, the move toward base-2 or binary computing in the 1930s brought about a new paradigm in technology—the digital computer, whose most elementary component was an on–off switch. Information on a digital system is represented using a combination of on and off signals, stored as binary digits (shortened to bits): zeros and ones. Text characters, symbols, or numerical values can all be coded as bits, so that information stored in digital memory is just zeros and ones, regardless of the storage medium. The history of computer memory is closely linked to the history of computers but a distinction should be made between primary (or main) and secondary memory. Computers only need operate on one segment of data at a time, and with memory being a scarce resource, the rest of the data set could be stored in less expensive and more abundant secondary memory.

13. Early Digital Computers

Digital computers were a marked departure from the electrical and mechanical calculating and computing machines in wide use from the early twentieth century. The innovation was of information being represented using only two states (on or off), which came to be known as ‘‘digital.’’ Binary (base 2) arithmetic and logic provided the tools for these machines to perform useful functions. George Boole’s binary system of algebra allowed any mathematical equation to be represented by simply true or false logic statements. By using only two states, engineering was also greatly simplified, and universality and accuracy increased. Further developments from the early purpose-built machines, to ones that were programmable accompanied by many key technological developments, resulted in the well-known success and proliferation of the digital computer.

14. Electronic Control Technology

The advancement of electrical engineering in the twentieth century made a fundamental change in control technology. New electronic devices including vacuum tubes (valves) and transistors were used to replace electromechanical elements in conventional controllers and to develop new types of controllers. In these practices, engineers discovered basic principles of control theory that could be further applied to design electronic control systems.

15. Encryption and Code Breaking

The word cryptography comes from the Greek words for ‘‘hidden’’ (kryptos) and ‘‘to write’’ (graphein)—literally, the science of ‘‘hidden writing.’’ In the twentieth century, cryptography became fundamental to information technology (IT) security generally. Before the invention of the digital computer at mid-century, national governments across the world relied on mechanical and electromechanical cryptanalytic devices to protect their own national secrets and communications, as well as to expose enemy secrets. Code breaking played an important role in both World Wars I and II, and the successful exploits of Polish and British cryptographers and signals intelligence experts in breaking the code of the German Enigma ciphering machine (which had a range of possible transformations between a message and its code of approximately 150 trillion (or 150 million million million) are well documented.

16. Error Checking and Correction

In telecommunications, whether transmission of data or voice signals is over copper, fiber-optic, or wireless links, information coded in the signal transmitted must be decoded by the receiver from a background of noise. Signal errors can be introduced, for example from physical defects in the transmission medium (semiconductor crystal defects, dust or scratches on magnetic memory, bubbles in optical fibers), from electromagnetic interference (natural or manmade) or cosmic rays, or from cross-talk (unwanted coupling) between channels. In digital signal transmission, data is transmitted as ‘‘bits’’ (ones or zeros, corresponding to on or off in electronic circuits). Random bit errors occur singly and in no relation to each other. Burst error is a large, sustained error or loss of data, perhaps caused by transmission problems in the connecting cables, or sudden noise. Analog to digital conversion can also introduce sampling errors.

17. Global Positioning System (GPS)

The NAVSTAR (NAVigation System Timing And Ranging) Global Positioning System (GPS) provides an unlimited number of military and civilian users worldwide with continuous, highly accurate data on their position in four dimensions— latitude, longitude, altitude, and time— through all weather conditions. It includes space, control, and user segments (Figure 6). A constellation of 24 satellites in 10,900 nautical miles, nearly circular orbits—six orbital planes, equally spaced 60 degrees apart, inclined approximately 55 degrees relative to the equator, and each with four equidistant satellites—transmits microwave signals in two different L-band frequencies. From any point on earth, between five and eight satellites are ‘‘visible’’ to the user. Synchronized, extremely precise atomic clocks—rubidium and cesium— aboard the satellites render the constellation semiautonomous by alleviating the need to continuously control the satellites from the ground. The control segment consists of a master facility at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, and a global network of automated stations. It passively tracks the entire constellation and, via an S-band uplink, periodically sends updated orbital and clock data to each satellite to ensure that navigation signals received by users remain accurate. Finally, GPS users—on land, at sea, in the air or space—rely on commercially produced receivers to convert satellite signals into position, time, and velocity estimates.

18. Gyrocompass and Inertial Guidance

Before the twentieth century, navigation at sea employed two complementary methods, astronomical and dead reckoning. The former involved direct measurements of celestial phenomena to ascertain position, while the latter required continuous monitoring of a ship’s course, speed, and distance run. New navigational technology was required not only for iron ships in which traditional compasses required correction, but for aircraft and submarines in which magnetic compasses cannot be used. Owing to their rapid motion, aircraft presented challenges for near instantaneous navigation data collection and reduction. Electronics furnished the exploitation of radio and the adaptation of a gyroscope to direction finding through the invention of the nonmagnetic gyrocompass.

Although the Cold War arms race after World War II led to the development of inertial navigation, German manufacture of the V-2 rocket under the direction of Wernher von Braun during the war involved a proto-inertial system, a two-gimballed gyro with an integrator to determine speed. Inertial guidance combines a gyrocompass with accelerometers installed along orthogonal axes, devices that record all accelerations of the vehicle in which inertial guidance has been installed. With this system, if the initial position of the vehicle is known, then the vehicle’s position at any moment is known because integrators record all directions and accelerations and calculate speeds and distance run. Inertial guidance devices can subtract accelerations due to gravity or other motions of the vehicle. Because inertial guidance does not depend on an outside reference, it is the ultimate dead reckoning system, ideal for the nuclear submarines for which they were invented and for ballistic missiles. Their self-contained nature makes them resistant to electronic countermeasures. Inertial systems were first installed in commercial aircraft during the 1960s. The expense of manufacturing inertial guidance mechanisms (and their necessary management by computer) has limited their application largely to military and some commercial purposes. Inertial systems accumulate errors, so their use at sea (except for submarines) has been as an adjunct to other navigational methods, unlike aircraft applications. Only the development of the global positioning system (GPS) at the end of the century promised to render all previous navigational technologies obsolete. Nevertheless, a range of technologies, some dating to the beginning of the century, remain in use in a variety of commercial and leisure applications.

19. Hybrid Computers

Following the emergence of the analog–digital demarcation in the late 1940s—and the ensuing battle between a speedy analog versus the accurate digital—the term ‘‘hybrid computer’’ surfaced in the early 1960s. The assumptions held by the adherents of the digital computer—regarding the dynamic mechanization of computational labor to accompany the equally dynamic increase in computational work—was becoming a universal ideology. From this perspective, the digital computer justly appeared to be technically superior. In introducing the digital computer to social realities, however, extensive interaction with the experienced analog computer adherents proved indispensable, especially given that the digital proponents’ expectation of progress by employing the available and inexpensive hardware was stymied by the lack of inexpensive software. From this perspective—as historiographically unwanted it may be by those who agree with the essentialist conception of the analog–digital demarcation—the history of the hybrid computer suggests that the computer as we now know it was brought about by linking the analog and the digital, not by separating them. Placing the ideal analog and the ideal digital at the two poles, all computing techniques that combined some features of both fell beneath ‘‘hybrid computation’’; the designators ‘‘balanced’’ or ‘‘true’’ were preserved for those built with appreciable amounts of both. True hybrids fell into the middle spectrum that included: pure analog computers, analog computers using digital-type numerical analysis techniques, analog computers programmed with the aid of digital computers, analog computers using digital control and logic, analog computers using digital subunits, analog computers using digital computers as peripheral equipment, balanced hybrid computer systems, digital computers using analog subroutines, digital computers with analog arithmetic elements, digital computers designed to permit analog-type programming, digital computers with analog-oriented compilers and interpreters, and pure digital computers.

20. Information Theory

Information theory, also known originally as the mathematical theory of communication, was first explicitly formulated during the mid-twentieth century. Almost immediately it became a foundation; first, for the more systematic design and utilization of numerous telecommunication and information technologies; and second, for resolving a paradox in thermodynamics. Finally, information theory has contributed to new interpretations of a wide range of biological and cultural phenomena, from organic physiology and genetics to cognitive behavior, human language, economics, and political decision making. Reflecting the symbiosis between theory and practice typical of twentieth century technology, technical issues in early telegraphy and telephony gave rise to a proto-information theory developed by Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs in 1924 and Ralph Hartley, also at Bell Labs, in 1928. This theory in turn contributed to advances in telecommunications, which stimulated the development of information theory per se by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, in their book The Mathematical Theory of Communication published in 1949. As articulated by Claude Shannon, a Bell Labs researcher, the technical concept of information is defined by the probability of a specific message or signal being picked out from a number of possibilities and transmitted from A to B. Information in this sense is mathematically quantifiable. The amount of information, I, conveyed by signal, S, is inversely related to its probability, P. That is, the more improbable a message, the more information it contains. To facilitate the mathematical analysis of messages, the measure is conveniently defined as I ¼ log2 1/P(S), and is named a binary digit or ‘‘bit’’ for short. Thus in the simplest case of a two-state signal (1 or 0, corresponding to on or off in electronic circuits), with equal probability for each state, the transmission of either state as the code for a message would convey one bit of information. The theory of information opened up by this conceptual analysis has become the basis for constructing and analyzing digital computational devices and a whole range of information technologies (i.e., technologies including telecommunications and data processing), from telephones to computer networks.

21. Internet

The Internet is a global computer network of networks whose origins are found in U.S. military efforts. In response to Sputnik and the emerging space race, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was formed in 1958 as an agency of the Pentagon. The researchers at ARPA were given a generous mandate to develop innovative technologies such as communications.

In 1962, psychologist J.C.R. Licklider from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory joined ARPA to take charge of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). In 1963 Licklider wrote a memo proposing an interactive network allowing people to communicate via computer. This project did not materialize. In 1966, Bob Taylor, then head of the IPTO, noted that he needed three different computer terminals to connect to three different machines in different locations around the nation. Taylor also recognized that universities working with IPTO needed more computing resources. Instead of the government buying machines for each university, why not share machines? Taylor revitalized Licklider’s idea, securing $1 million in funding, and hired 29-yearold Larry Roberts to direct the creation of ARPAnet.

In 1974, Robert Kahn and Vincent Cerf proposed the first internet-working protocol, a way for datagrams (packets) to be communicated between disparate networks, and they called it an ‘‘internet.’’ Their efforts created transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP). In 1982, TCP/IP replaced NCP on ARPAnet. Other networks adopted TCP/IP and it became the dominant standard for all networking by the late 1990s.

In 1981 the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) created Computer Science Network (CSNET) to provide universities that did not have access to ARPAnet with their own network. In 1986, the NSF sponsored the NSFNET ‘‘backbone’’ to connect five supercomputing centers. The backbone also connected ARPAnet and CSNET together, and the idea of a network of networks became firmly entrenched. The open technical architecture of the Internet allowed numerous innovations to be grafted easily onto the whole. When ARPAnet was dismantled in 1990, the Internet was thriving at universities and technology- oriented companies. The NSF backbone was dismantled in 1995 when the NSF realized that commercial entities could keep the Internet running and growing on their own, without government subsidy. Commercial network providers worked through the Commercial Internet Exchange to manage network traffic.

22. Mainframe Computers

The term ‘‘computer’’ currently refers to a general-purpose, digital, electronic, stored-program calculating machine. The term ‘‘mainframe’’ refers to a large, expensive, multiuser computer, able to handle a wide range of applications. The term was derived from the main frame or cabinet in which the central processing unit (CPU) and main memory of a computer were kept separate from those cabinets that held peripheral devices used for input and output.

Computers are generally classified as supercomputers, mainframes, minicomputers, or microcomputers. This classification is based on factors such as processing capability, cost, and applications, with supercomputers the fastest and most expensive. All computers were called mainframes until the 1960s, including the first supercomputer, the naval ordnance research calculator (NORC), offered by International Business Machines (IBM) in 1954. In 1960, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) shipped the PDP-1, a computer that was much smaller and cheaper than a mainframe.

Mainframes once each filled a large room, cost millions of dollars, and needed a full maintenance staff, partly in order to repair the damage caused by the heat generated by their vacuum tubes. These machines were characterized by proprietary operating systems and connections through dumb terminals that had no local processing capabilities. As personal computers developed and began to approach mainframes in speed and processing power, however, mainframes have evolved to support a client/server relationship, and to interconnect with open standard-based systems. They have become particularly useful for systems that require reliability, security, and centralized control. Their ability to process large amounts of data quickly make them particularly valuable for storage area networks (SANs). Mainframes today contain multiple CPUs, providing additional speed through multiprocessing operations. They support many hundreds of simultaneously executing programs, as well as numerous input and output processors for multiplexing devices, such as video display terminals and disk drives. Many legacy systems, large applications that have been developed, tested, and used over time, are still running on mainframes.

23. Mineral Prospecting

Twentieth century mineral prospecting draws upon the accumulated knowledge of previous exploration and mining activities, advancing technology, expanding knowledge of geologic processes and deposit models, and mining and processing capabilities to determine where and how to look for minerals of interest. Geologic models have been developed for a wide variety of deposit types; the prospector compares geologic characteristics of potential exploration areas with those of deposit models to determine which areas have similar characteristics and are suitable prospecting locations. Mineral prospecting programs are often team efforts, integrating general and site-specific knowledge of geochemistry, geology, geophysics, and remote sensing to ‘‘discover’’ hidden mineral deposits and ‘‘measure’’ their economic potential with increasing accuracy and reduced environmental disturbance. Once a likely target zone has been identified, multiple exploration tools are used in a coordinated program to characterize the deposit and its economic potential.

24. Packet Switching

Historically the first communications networks were telegraphic—the electrical telegraph replacing the mechanical semaphore stations in the mid-nineteenth century. Telegraph networks were largely eclipsed by the advent of the voice (telephone) network, which first appeared in the late nineteenth century, and provided the immediacy of voice conversation. The Public Switched Telephone Network allows a subscriber to dial a connection to another subscriber, with the connection being a series of telephone lines connected together through switches at the telephone exchanges along the route. This technique is known as circuit switching, as a circuit is set up between the subscribers, and is held until the call is cleared.

One of the disadvantages of circuit switching is the fact that the capacity of the link is often significantly underused due to silences in the conversation, but the spare capacity cannot be shared with other traffic. Another disadvantage is the time it takes to establish the connection before the conversation can begin. One could liken this to sending a railway engine from London to Edinburgh to set the points before returning to pick up the carriages. What is required is a compromise between the immediacy of conversation on an established circuit-switched connection, with the ad hoc delivery of a store-and-forward message system. This is what packet switching is designed to provide.

25. Personal Computers

A personal computer, or PC, is designed for personal use. Its central processing unit (CPU) runs single-user systems and application software, processes input from the user, sending output to a variety of peripheral devices. Programs and data are stored in memory and attached storage devices. Personal computers are generally single-user desktop machines, but the term has been applied to any computer that ‘‘stands alone’’ for a single user, including portable computers.

The technology that enabled the construction of personal computers was the microprocessor, a programmable integrated circuit (or ‘‘chip’’) that acts as the CPU. Intel introduced the first microprocessor in 1971, the 4-bit 4004, which it called a ‘‘microprogrammable computer on a chip.’’ The 4004 was originally developed as a general-purpose chip for a programmable calculator, but Intel introduced it as part of Intel’s Microcomputer System 4-bit, or MCS-4, which also included read-only memory (ROM) and random-access memory (RAM) memory chips and a shift register chip. In August 1972, Intel followed with the 8-bit 8008, then the more powerful 8080 in June 1974. Following Intel’s lead, computers based on the 8080 were usually called microcomputers.

The success of the minicomputer during the 1960s prepared computer engineers and users for ‘‘single person, single CPU’’ computers. Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) widely used PDP-10, for example, was smaller, cheaper, and more accessible than large mainframe computers. Timeshared computers operating under operating systems such as TOPS-10 on the PDP-10— co-developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and DEC in 1972—created the illusion of individual control of computing power by providing rapid access to personal programs and files. By the early 1970s, the accessibility of minicomputers, advances in microelectronics, and component miniaturization created expectations of affordable personal computers.

26. Printers

Printers generally can be categorized as either impact or nonimpact. Like typewriters, impact printers generate output by striking the page with a solid substance. Impact printers include daisy wheel and dot matrix printers. The daisy wheel printer, which was introduced in 1972 by Diablo Systems, operates by spinning the daisy wheel to the correct character whereupon a hammer strikes it, forcing the character through an inked ribbon and onto the paper. Dot matrix printers operate by using a series of small pins to strike a matrix or grid ribbon coated with ink. The strike of the pin forces the ink to transfer to the paper at the point of impact. Unlike daisy wheel printers, dot matrix printers can generate italic and other character types through producing different pin patterns. Nonimpact printers generate images by spraying or fusing ink to paper or other output media. This category includes inkjet printers, laser printers, and thermal printers. Whether they are inkjet or laser, impact or nonimpact, all modern printers incorporate features of dot matrix technology in their design: they operate by generating dots onto paper or other physical media.

27. Processors for Computers

A processor is the part of the computer system that manipulates the data. The first computer processors of the late 1940s and early 1950s performed three main functions and had three main components. They worked in a cycle to gather, decode, and execute instructions. They were made up of the arithmetic and logic unit, the control unit, and some extra storage components or registers. Today, most processors contain these components and perform these same functions, but since the 1960s they have developed different forms, capabilities, and organization. As with computers in general, increasing speed and decreasing size has marked their development.

28. Radionavigation

Astronomical and dead-reckoning techniques furnished the methods of navigating ships until the twentieth century, when exploitation of radio waves, coupled with electronics, met the needs of aircraft with their fast speeds, but also transformed all navigational techniques. The application of radio to dead reckoning has allowed vessels to determine their positions in all-weather by direction finding (known as radio direction finding, or RDF) or by hyperbolic systems. Another use of radio, radar (radio direction and rangefinding), enables vessels to determine their distance to, or their bearing from, objects of known position. Radionavigation complements traditional navigational methods by employing three frames of reference. First, radio enables a vessel to navigate by lines of bearing to shore transmitters (the most common use of radio). This is directly analogous to the use of lighthouses for bearings. Second, shore stations may take radio bearings of craft and relay to them computed positions. Third, radio beacons provide aircraft or ships with signals that function as true compasses.

29. Software Application Programs

At the beginning of the computer age around the late 1940s, inventors of the intelligent machine were not thinking about applications software, or any software other than that needed to run the bare machine to do mathematical calculating. It was only when Maurice Wilkes’ young protégé David Williams crafted a tidy set of initial orders for the EDSAC, an early programmable digital computer, that users could string together standard subroutines to a program and have the execution jump between them. This was the beginning of software as we know it—something that runs on a machine other than an operating system to make it do anything desired. ‘‘Applications’’ are software other than system programs that run the actual hardware. Manufacturers always had this software, and as the 1950s progressed they would ‘‘bundle’’ applications with hardware to make expensive computers more attractive. Some programming departments were even placed in the marketing departments.

30. Software Engineering

Software engineering aims to develop the programs that allow digital computers to do useful work in a systematic, disciplined manner that produces high-quality software on time and on budget. As computers have spread throughout industrialized societies, software has become a multibillion dollar industry. Both the users and developers of software depend a great deal on the effectiveness of the development process.

Software is a concept that didn’t even pertain to the first electronic digital computers. They were ‘‘programmed’’ through switches and patch cables that physically altered the electrical pathways of the machine. It was not until the Manchester Mark I, the first operational stored-program electronic digital computer, was developed in 1948 at the University of Manchester in England that configuring the machine to solve a specific problem became a matter of software rather than hardware. Subsequently, instructions were stored in memory along with data.

31. Supercomputers

Supercomputers are high-performance computing devices that are generally used for numerical calculation, for the study of physical systems either through numerical simulation or the processing of scientific data. Initially, they were large, expensive, mainframe computers, which were usually owned by government research labs. By the end of the twentieth century, they were more often networks of inexpensive small computers. The common element of all of these machines was their ability to perform high-speed floating-point arithmetic— binary arithmetic that approximates decimal numbers with a fixed number of bits—the basis of numerical computation.

With the advent of inexpensive supercomputers, these machines moved beyond the large government labs and into smaller research and engineering facilities. Some were used for the study of social science. A few were employed by business concerns, such as stock brokerages or graphic designers.

32. Systems Programs

The operating systems used in all computers today are a result of the development and organization of early systems programs designed to control and regulate the operations of computer hardware. The early computing machines such as the ENIAC of 1945 were ‘‘programmed’’ manually with connecting cables and setting switches for each new calculation. With the advent of the stored program computer of the late 1940s (the Manchester Mark I, EDVAC, EDSAC (electronic delay storage automatic calculator), the first system programs such as assemblers and compilers were developed and installed. These programs performed oft repeated and basic operations for computer use including converting programs into machine code, storing and retrieving files, managing computer resources and peripherals, and aiding in the compilation of new programs. With the advent of programming languages, and the dissemination of more computers in research centers, universities, and businesses during the late 1950s and 1960s, a large group of users began developing programs, improving usability, and organizing system programs into operating systems.

The 1970s and 1980s saw a turn away from some of the complications of system software, an interweaving of features from different operating systems, and the development of systems programs for the personal computer. In the early 1970s, two programmers from Bell Laboratories, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, developed a smaller, simpler operating system called UNIX. Unlike past system software, UNIX was portable and could be run on different computer systems. Due in part to low licensing fees and simplicity of design, UNIX increased in popularity throughout the 1970s. At the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, research during the 1970s led to the development of system software for the Apple Macintosh computer that included a GUI (graphical user interface). This type of system software filtered the user’s interaction with the computer through the use of graphics or icons representing computer processes. In 1985, a year after the release of the Apple Macintosh computer, a GUI was overlaid on Microsoft’s then dominant operating system, MS-DOS, to produce Microsoft Windows. The Microsoft Windows series of operating systems became and remains the dominant operating system on personal computers.

33. World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (Web) is a ‘‘finite but unbounded’’ collection of media-rich digital resources that are connected through high-speed digital networks. It relies upon an Internet protocol suite that supports cross-platform transmission and makes available a wide variety of media types (i.e., multimedia). The cross-platform delivery environment represents an important departure from more traditional network communications protocols such as e-mail, telnet, and file transfer protocols (FTP) because it is content-centric. It is also to be distinguished from earlier document acquisition systems such as Gopher, which was designed in 1991, originally as a mainframe program but quickly implemented over networks, and wide area information systems (WAIS), also released in 1991. WAIS accommodated a narrower range of media formats and failed to include hyperlinks within their navigation protocols. Following the success of Gopher on the Internet, the Web quickly extended and enriched the metaphor of integrated browsing and navigation. This made it possible to navigate and peruse a wide variety of media types effortlessly on the Web, which in turn led to the Web’s hegemony as an Internet protocol.

History of Computer Technology

Computer Technology

The modern computer—the (electronic) digital computer in which the stored program concept is realized and hence self-modifying programs are possible—was only invented in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the history of computing (interpreted as the usage of modern computers) is only understandable against the background of the many forms of information processing as well as mechanical computing devices that solved mathematical problems in the first half of the twentieth century. The part these several predecessors played in the invention and early history of the computer may be interpreted from two different perspectives: on the one hand it can be argued that these machines prepared the way for the modern digital computer, on the other hand it can be argued that the computer, which was invented as a mathematical instrument, was reconstructed to be a data-processing machine, a control mechanism, and a communication tool.

The invention and early history of the digital computer has its roots in two different kinds of developments: first, information processing in business and government bureaucracies; and second, the use and the search for mathematical instruments and methods that could solve mathematical problems arising in the sciences and in engineering.

Origins in Mechanical Office Equipment

The development of information processing in business and government bureaucracies had its origins in the late nineteenth century, which was not just an era of industrialization and mass production but also a time of continuous growth in administrative work. The economic precondition for this development was the creation of a global economy, which caused growth in production of goods and trade. This brought with it an immense increase in correspondence, as well as monitoring and accounting activities—corporate bureaucracies began to collect and process data in increasing quantities. Almost at the same time, government organizations became more and more interested in collating data on population and demographic changes (e.g., expanding tax revenues, social security, and wide-ranging planning and monitoring functions) and analyzing this data statistically.

Bureaucracies in the U.S. and in Europe reacted in a different way to these changes. While in Europe for the most part neither office machines nor telephones entered offices until 1900, in the U.S. in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the information-handling techniques in bureaucracies were radically changed because of the introduction of mechanical devices for writing, copying, and counting data. The rise of big business in the U.S. had caused a growing demand for management control tools, which was fulfilled by a new ideology of systematic management together with the products of the rising office machines industry. Because of a later start in industrialization, the government and businesses in the U.S. were not forced to reorganize their bureaucracies when they introduced office machines. This, together with an ideological preference for modern office equipment, was the cause of a market for office machines and of a far-reaching mechanization of office work in the U.S. In the 1880s typewriters and cash registers became very widespread, followed by adding machines and book-keeping machines in the 1890s. From 1880 onward, the makers of office machines in the U.S. underwent a period of enormous growth, and in 1920 the office machine industry annually generated about $200 million in revenue. In Europe, by comparison, mechanization of office work emerged about two decades later than in the U.S.—both Germany and Britain adopted the American system of office organization and extensive use of office machines for the most part no earlier than the 1920s.

During the same period the rise of a new office machine technology began. Punched card systems, initially invented by Herman Hollerith to analyze the U.S. census in 1890, were introduced. By 1911 Hollerith’s company had only about 100 customers, but after it had been merged in the same year with two other companies to become the Computing- Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), it began a tremendous ascent to become the world leader in the office machine industry. CTR’s general manager, Thomas J. Watson, understood the extraordinary potential of these punched-card accounting devices, which enabled their users to process enormous amounts of data largely automatically, in a rapid way and at an adequate level of cost and effort. Due to Watson’s insights and his extraordinary management abilities, the company (which had since been renamed to International Business Machines (IBM)) became the fourth largest office machine supplier in the world by 1928—topped only by Remington Rand, National Cash Register (NCR), and the Burroughs Adding Machine Company.

Origin of Calculating Devices and Analog Instruments

Compared with the fundamental changes in the world of corporate and government bureaucracies caused by office machinery during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, calculating machines and instruments seemed to have only a minor influence in the world of science and engineering. Scientists and engineers had always been confronted with mathematical problems and had over the centuries developed techniques such as mathematical tables. However, many new mathematical instruments emerged in the nineteenth century and increasingly began to change the world of science and engineering. Apart from the slide rule, which came into popular use in Europe from the early nineteenth century onwards (and became the symbol of the engineer for decades), calculating machines and instruments were only produced on a large scale in the middle of the nineteenth century.

In the 1850s the production of calculating machines as well as that of planimeters (used to measure the area of closed curves, a typical problem in land surveying) started on different scales. Worldwide, less than 2,000 calculating machines were produced before 1880, but more than 10,000 planimeters were produced by the early 1880s. Also, various types of specialized mathematical analog instruments were produced on a very small scale in the late nineteenth century; among them were integraphs for the graphical solution of special types of differential equations, harmonic analyzers for the determination of Fourier coefficients of a periodic function, and tide predictors that could calculate the time and height of the ebb and flood tides.

Nonetheless, in 1900 only geodesists and astronomers (as well as part of the engineering community) made extensive use of mathematical instruments. In addition, the establishment of applied mathematics as a new discipline took place at German universities on a small scale and the use of apparatus and machines as well as graphical and numerical methods began to flourish during this time. After World War I, the development of engineering sciences and of technical physics gave a tremendous boost to applied mathematics in Germany and Britain. In general, scientists and engineers became more aware of the capabilities of calculating machines and a change of the calculating culture—from the use of tables to the use of calculating machines—took place.

One particular problem that was increasingly encountered by mechanical and electrical engineers in the 1920s was the solution of several types of differential equations, which were not solvable by analytic solutions. As one important result of this development, a new type of analog instrument— the so called ‘‘differential analyzer’’—was invented in 1931 by the engineer Vannevar Bush at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In contrast to its predecessors—several types of integraphs—this machine (which was later called an analog computer) could be used not only to solve a special class of differential equation, but a more general class of differential equations associated with engineering problems. Before the digital computer was invented in the 1940s there was an intensive use of analog instruments (similar to Bush’s differential analyzer) and a number of machines were constructed in the U.S. and in Europe after the model of Bush’s machine before and during World War II. Analog instruments also became increasingly important in several fields such as the firing control of artillery on warships or the control of rockets. It is worth mentioning here that only for a limited class of scientific and engineering problems was it possible to construct an analog computer— weather forecasting and the problem of shock waves produced by an atomic bomb, for example, required the solution of partial differential equations, for which a digital computer was needed.

The Invention of the Computer

The invention of the electronic digital stored-program computer is directly connected with the development of numerical calculation tools for the solution of mathematical problems in the sciences and in engineering. The ideas that led to the invention of the computer were developed simultaneously by scientists and engineers in Germany, Britain, and the U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s. The first freely programmable program-controlled automatic calculator was developed by the civil engineering student Konrad Zuse in Germany. Zuse started development work on program-controlled computing machines in the 1930s, when he had to deal with extensive calculations in static, and in 1941 his Z3, which was based on electromechanical relay technology, became operational.

Several similar developments in the U.S. were in progress at the same time. In 1937 Howard Aiken, a physics student at Harvard University, approached IBM to build a program-controlled calculator— later called the ‘‘Harvard Mark I.’’ On the basis of a concept Aiken had developed because of his experiences with the numerical solution of partial differential equations, the machine was built and became operational in 1944. At almost the same time a series of important relay computers was built at the Bell Laboratories in New York following a suggestion by George R. Stibitz. All these developments in the U.S. were spurred by the outbreak of World War II. The first large-scale programmable electronic computer called the Colossus was built in complete secrecy in 1943 to 1944 at Bletchley Park in Britain in order to help break the German Enigma machine ciphers.

However, it was neither these relay calculators nor the Colossus that were decisive for the development of the universal computer, but the ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer), which was developed at the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Extensive ballistic calculations were carried out there for the U.S. Army during World War II with the aid of the Bush ‘‘differential analyzer’’ and more than a hundred women (‘‘computors’’) working on mechanical desk calculators. Observing that capacity was barely sufficient to compute the artillery firing tables, the physicist John W. Mauchly and the electronic engineer John Presper Eckert started developing the ENIAC, a digital version of the differential analyzer, in 1943 with funding from the U.S. Army.

In 1944 the mathematician John von Neumann turned his attention to the ENIAC because of his mathematical work on the Manhattan Project (on the implosion of the hydrogen bomb). While the ENIAC was being built, Neumann and the ENIAC team drew up plans for a successor to the ENIAC in order to improve the shortcomings of the ENIAC concept, such as the very small memory and the time-consuming reprogramming (actually rewiring) required to change the setup for a new calculation. In these meetings the idea of a stored-program, universal machine evolved. Memory was to be used to store the program in addition to data. This would enable the machine to execute conditional branches and change the flow of the program. The concept of a computer in the modern sense of the word was born and in 1945 von Neumann wrote the important ‘‘First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,’’ which described the stored-program, universal computer. The logical structure that was presented in this draft report is now referred to as the ‘‘von Neumann architecture.’’ This EDVAC report was originally intended for internal use but once made freely available it became the ‘‘bible’’ for computer pioneers throughout the world in the 1940s and 1950s. The first computer featuring the von Neumann architecture operated at Cambridge University in the U.K.; in June 1949 the EDSAC (electronic delay storage automatic computer) computer built by Maurice Wilkes—designed according to the EDVAC principles—became operational.

The Computer as a Scientific Instrument

As soon as the computer was invented, a growing demand for computers by scientists and engineers evolved, and numerous American and European universities started their own computer projects in the 1940s and 1950s. After the technical difficulties of building an electronic computer were solved, scientists grasped the opportunity to use the new scientific instrument for their research. For example, at the University of Gottingen in Germany, the early computers were used for the initial value problems of partial differential equations associated with hydrodynamic problems from atomic physics and aerodynamics. Another striking example was the application of von Neumann’s computer at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton to numerical weather forecasts in 1950. As a result, numerical weather forecasts could be made on a regular basis from the mid-1950s onwards.

Mathematical methods have always been of a certain importance for science and engineering sciences, but only the use of the electronic digital computer (as an enabling technology) made it possible to broaden the application of mathematical methods to such a degree that research in science, medicine, and engineering without computer- based mathematical methods has become virtually inconceivable at the end of the twentieth century. A number of additional computer-based techniques, such as scientific visualization, medical imaging, computerized tomography, pattern recognition, image processing, and statistical applications, have become of the utmost significance for science, medicine, engineering, and social sciences. In addition, the computer changed the way engineers construct technical artifacts fundamentally because of the use of computer-based methods such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacture (CAM), computer-aided engineering, control applications, and finite-element methods. However, the most striking example seems to be the development of scientific computing and computer modeling, which became accepted as a third mode of scientific research that complements experimentation and theoretical analysis. Scientific computing and computer modeling are based on supercomputers as the enabling technology, which became important tools for modern science routinely used to simulate physical and chemical phenomena. These high-speed computers became equated with the machines developed by Seymour Cray, who built the fastest computers in the world for many years. The supercomputers he launched such as the legendary CRAY I from 1976 were the basis for computer modeling of real world systems, and helped, for example, the defense industry in the U.S. to build weapons systems and the oil industry to create geological models that show potential oil deposits.

Growth of Digital Computers in Business and Information Processing

When the digital computer was invented as a mathematical instrument in the 1940s, it could not have been foreseen that this new artifact would ever be of a certain importance in the business world. About 50 firms entered the computer business worldwide in the late 1940s and the early 1950s, and the computer was reconstructed to be a type of electronic data-processing machine that took the place of punched-card technology as well as other office machine technology. It is interesting to consider that there were mainly three types of companies building computers in the 1950s and 1960s: newly created computer firms (such as the company founded by the ENIAC inventors Eckert and Mauchly), electronics and control equipments firms (such as RCA and General Electric), and office appliance companies (such as Burroughs and NCR). Despite the fact that the first digital computers were put on the market by a German and a British company, U.S. firms dominated the world market from the 1950s onward, as these firms had the biggest market as well as financial support from the government.

Generally speaking, the Cold War exerted an enormous influence on the development of computer technology. Until the early 1960s the U.S. military and the defense industry were the central drivers of the digital computer expansion, serving as the main market for computer technology and shaping and speeding up the formation of the rising computer industry. Because of the U.S. military’s role as the ‘‘tester’’ for prototype hard- and software, it had a direct and lasting influence on technological developments; in addition, it has to be noted that the spread of computer technology was partly hindered by military secrecy. Even after the emergence of a large civilian computer market in the 1960s, the U.S. military maintained its influence by investing a great deal in computer in hard- and software and in computer research projects.

From the middle of the 1950s onwards the world computer market was dominated by IBM, which accounted for more than 70 percent of the computer industry revenues until the mid-1970s. The reasons for IBM’s overwhelming success were diverse, but the company had a unique combination of technical and organizational capabilities at its disposal that prepared it perfectly for the mainframe computer market. In addition, IBM benefited from enormous government contracts, which helped to develop excellence in computer technology and design. However, the greatest advantage of IBM was by no doubt its marketing organization and its reputation as a service-oriented firm, which was used to working closely with customers to adapt machinery to address specific problems, and this key difference between IBM and its competitors persisted right into the computer age.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the computer market—consisting of IBM and seven other companies called the ‘‘seven dwarves’’—was dominated by IBM, with its 650 and 1401 computers. By 1960 the market for computers was still small. Only about 7,000 computers had been delivered by the computer industry, and at this time even IBM was primarily a punched-card machine supplier, which was still the major source of its income. Only in 1960 did a boom in demand for computers start, and by 1970 the number of computers installed worldwide had increased to more than 100,000. The computer industry was on the track to become one of the world’s major industries, and was totally dominated by IBM.

The outstanding computer system of this period was IBM’s System/360. It was announced in 1964 as a compatible family of the same computer architecture, and employed interchangeable peripheral devices in order to solve IBM’s problems with a hotchpotch of incompatible product lines (which had evoked large problems in the development and maintenance of a great deal of different hardware and software products). Despite the fact that neither the technology used nor the systems programming were of a high-tech technology at the time, the System/360 established a new standard for mainframe computers for decades. Various computer firms in the U.S., Europe, Japan and even Russia, concentrated on copying components, peripherals for System/360 or tried to build System/360-compatible computers.

The growth of the computer market during the 1960s was accompanied by market shakeouts: two of the ‘‘seven dwarves’’ left the computer business after the first computer recession in the early 1970s, and afterwards the computer market was controlled by IBM and BUNCH (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell). At the same time, an internationalization of the computer market took place—U.S. companies controlled the world market for computers— which caused considerable fears over loss of national independence in European and Japanese national governments, and these subsequently stirred up national computing programs. While the European attempts to create national champions as well as the more general attempt to create a European-wide market for mainframe computers failed in the end, Japan’s attempt to found a national computer industry has been successful: Until today Japan is the only nation able to compete with the U.S. in a wide array of high-tech computer-related products.

Real-Time and Time-Sharing

Until the 1960s almost all computers in government and business were running batch-processing applications (i.e., the computers were only used in the same way as the punched-card accounting machines they had replaced). In the early 1950s, however, the computer industry introduced a new mode of computing named ‘‘real-time’’ in the business sector for the first time, which was originally developed for military purposes in MIT’s Whirlwind project. This project was initially started in World War II with the aim of designing an aircraft simulator by analog methods, and later became a part of a research and development program for the gigantic, computerized anti-aircraft defense system SAGE (semi-automatic ground environment) built up by IBM in the 1950s.

The demand for this new mode of computing was created by cultural and structural changes in economy. The increasing number of financial transactions in banks and insurance companies as well as increasing airline traveling activities made necessary new computer-based information systems that led finally to new forms of business evolution through information technology.

The case of the first computerized airline reservation system SABRE, developed for American Airlines by IBM in the 1950s and finally implemented in the early 1960s, serves to thoroughly illustrate these structural and structural changes in economy. Until the early 1950s, airline reservations had been made manually without any problems, but by 1953 this system was in crisis because increased air traffic and growing flight plan complexity had made reservation costs insupportable. SABRE became a complete success, demonstrating the potential of centralized real-time computing systems connected via a network. The system enabled flight agents throughout the U.S., who were equipped with desktop terminals, to gain a direct, real-time access to the central reservation system based on central IBM mainframe computers, while the airline was able to assign appropriate resources in response. Therefore, an effective combination of advantages was offered by SABRE—a better utilization of resources and a much higher customer convenience.

Very soon this new mode of computing spread around the business and government world and became commonplace throughout the service and distribution sectors of the economy; for example, bank tellers and insurance account representatives increasingly worked at terminals. On the one hand structural information problems led managers to go this way, and on the other hand the increasing use of computers as information handling machines in government and business had brought about the idea of computer-based accessible data retrieval. In the end, more and more IBM customers wanted to link dozens of operators directly to central computers by using terminal keyboards and display screens.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s—at the same time that IBM and American Airlines had begun the development of the SABRE airline reservation system—a group of brilliant computer scientists had a new idea for computer usage named ‘‘time sharing.’’ Instead of dedicating a multi-terminal system solely to a single application, they had the computer utility vision of organizing a mainframe computer so that several users could interact with it simultaneously. This vision was to change the nature of computing profoundly, because computing was no longer provided to naive users by programmers and systems analysts, and by the late 1960s time-sharing computers became widespread in the U.S.

Particularly important for this development had been the work of J.C.R. Licklider of the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. In 1960 Licklider had published a now-classic paper ‘‘Man–Computer Symbiosis’’ proposing the use of computers to augment human intellect and creating the vision of interactive computing. Licklider was very successful in translating his idea of a network allowing people on different computers to communicate into action, and convinced ARPA to start an enormous research program in 1962. Its budget surpassed that of all other sources of U.S. public research funding for computers combined. The ARPA research programs resulted in a series of fundamental moves forward in computer technology in areas such as computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and operating systems. For example, even the most influential current operating system, the general-purpose time-sharing system Unix, developed in the early 1970s at the Bell Laboratories, was a spin-off of an ambitious operating system project, Multics, funded by ARPA. The designers of Unix successfully attempted to keep away from complexity by using a clear, minimalist design approach to software design, and created a multitasking, multiuser operating system, which became the standard operating system in the 1980s.

Electronic Component Revolution

While the nature of business computing was changed by the new paradigms such as real time and time sharing, advances in solid-state components increasingly became a driving force for fundamental changes in the computer industry, and led to a dynamic interplay between new computer designs and new programming techniques that resulted in a remarkable series of technical developments. The technical progress of the mainframe computer had always run parallel to conversions in the electronics components. During the period from 1945 to 1965, two fundamental transformations in the electronics industry took place that were marked by the invention of the transistor in 1947 and the integrated circuit in 1957 to 1958. While the first generation of computers—lasting until about 1960—was characterized by vacuum tubes (valves) for switching elements, the second generation used the much smaller and more reliable transistors, which could be produced at a lower price. A new phase was inaugurated when an entire integrated circuit on a chip of silicon was produced in 1961, and when the first integrated circuits were produced for the military in 1962. A remarkable pace of progress in semiconductor innovations, known as the ‘‘revolution in miniature,’’ began to speed up the computer industry. The third generation of computers characterized by the use of integrated circuits began with the announcement of the IBM System/360 in 1964 (although this computer system did not use true integrated circuits). The most important effect of the introduction of integrated circuits was not to strengthen the leading mainframe computer systems, but to destroy Grosch’s Law, which stated that computing power increases as the square of its costs. In fact, the cost of computer power dramatically reduced during the next ten years.

This became clear with the introduction of the first computer to use integrated circuits on a full scale in 1965: the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) offered its PDP-8 computer for just $18,000, creating a new class of computers called minicomputers—small in size and low in cost—as well as opening up the market to new customers. Minicomputers were mainly used in areas other than general-purpose computing such as industrial applications and interactive graphics systems. The PDP-8 became the first widely successful minicomputer with over 50,000 items sold, demonstrating that there was a market for smaller computers. This success of DEC (by 1970 it had become the world’s third largest computer manufacturer) was supported by dramatic advances in solid-state technology. During the 1960s the number of transistors on a chip doubled every two years, and as a result minicomputers became continuously more powerful and more inexpensive at an inconceivable speed.

Personal Computing

The most striking aspect of the consequences of the exponential increase of the number of transistors on a chip during the 1960s—as stated by ‘‘Moore’s Law’’: the number of transistors on a chip doubled every two years—was not the lowering of the costs of mainframe computer and minicomputer processing and storage, but the introduction of the first consumer products based on chip technology such as hand-held calculators and digital watches in about 1970. More specifically, the market acts in these industries were changed overnight by the shift from mechanical to chip technology, which led to an enormous deterioration in prices as well as a dramatic industry shakeout. These episodes only marked the beginning of wide-ranging changes in economy and society during the last quarter of the twentieth century leading to a new situation where chips played an essential role in almost every part of business and modern life.

The case of the invention of the personal computer serves to illustrate that it was not sufficient to develop the microprocessor as the enabling technology in order to create a new invention, but how much new technologies can be socially constructed by cultural factors and commercial interests. When the microprocessor, a single-chip integrated circuit implementation of a CPU, was launched by the semiconductor company Intel in 1971, there was no hindrance to producing a reasonably priced microcomputer, but it took six years until the consumer product PC emerged. None of the traditional mainframe and minicomputer companies were involved in creating the early personal computer. Instead, a group of computer hobbyists as well as the ‘‘computer liberation’’ movement in the U.S. became the driving force behind the invention of the PC. These two groups were desperately keen on a low-priced type of minicomputer for use at home for leisure activities such as computer games; or rather they had the counterculture vision of an unreservedly available and personal access to an inexpensive computer utility provided with rich information. When in 1975 the Altair 8800, an Intel 8080 microprocessor-based computer, was offered as an electronic hobbyist kit for less than $400, these two groups began to realize their vision of a ‘‘personal computer.’’ Very soon dozens of computer clubs and computer magazines were founded around the U.S., and these computer enthusiasts created the personal computer by combining the Altair with keyboards, disk drives, and monitors as well as by developing standard software for it. Consequently, in only two years, a more or less useless hobbyist kit had been changed into a computer that could easily be transformed in a consumer product.

The computer hobbyist period ended in 1977, when the first standard machines for an emerging consumer product mass market were sold. These included products such as the Commodore Pet and the Apple II, which included its own monitor, disk drive, and keyboard, and was provided with several basic software packages. Over next three years, spreadsheet, word processing, and database software were developed, and an immense market for games software evolved. As a result, personal computers became more and more a consumer product for ordinary people, and Apple’s revenues shot to more than $500 million in 1982. By 1980, the personal computer had transformed into a business machine, and IBM decided to develop its own personal computer, which was introduced as the IBM PC in 1981. It became an overwhelming success and set a new industry standard.

Apple tried to compete by launching their new Macintosh computer in 1984 provided with a revolutionary graphical user interface (GUI), which set a new standard for a user-friendly human–computer interaction. It was based on technology created by computer scientists at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in California, who had picked up on ideas about human– computer interaction developed at the Stanford Research Institute and at the University of Utah. Despite the fact that the Macintosh’s GUI was far superior to the MS-DOS operating system of the IBM-compatible PCs, Apple failed to win the business market and remained a niche player with a market share of about 10 percent. The PC main branch was determined by the companies IBM had chosen as its original suppliers in 1981 for the design of the microprocessor (Intel) and the operating system (Microsoft). While IBM failed to seize power in the operating system software market for PCs in a software war with Microsoft, Microsoft achieved dominance not only of the key market for PC operating systems, but also the key market of office applications during the first half of the 1990s.

In the early 1990s computing again underwent further fundamental changes with the appearance of the Internet, and for the most computer users, networking became an integral part of what it means to have a computer. Furthermore, the rise of the Internet indicated the impending arrival of a new ‘‘information infrastructure’’ as well as of a ‘‘digital convergence,’’ as the coupling of computers and communications networks was often called.

In addition, the 1990s were a period of an information technology boom, which was mainly based on the Internet hype. For many years previously, it seemed to a great deal of managers and journalists that the Internet would become not just an indispensable business tool, but also a miracle cure for economic growth and prosperity. In addition, computer scientists and sociologists started a discussion predicting the beginning of a new ‘‘information age’’ based on the Internet as a ‘‘technological revolution’’ and reshaping the ‘‘material basis’’ of industrial societies.

The Internet was the outcome of an unusual collaboration of a military–industrial–academic complex that promoted the development of this extraordinary innovation. It grew out of a military network called the ARPAnet, a project established and funded by ARPA in the 1960s. The ARPAnet was initially devoted to support of data communications for defense research projects and was only used by a small number of researchers in the 1970s. Its further development was primarily promoted by unintentional forms of network usage. The users of the ARPAnet became very much attracted by the opportunity for communicating through electronic mail, which rapidly surpassed all other forms of network activities. Another unplanned spin-off of the ARPAnet was the Usenet (Unix User Network), which started in 1979 as a link between two universities and enabled its users to subscribe to newsgroups. Electronic mail became a driving force for the creation of a large number of new proprietary networks funded by the existing computer services industry or by organizations such as the NSF (NSFnet). Because networks users’ desire for email to be able to cross network boundaries, an ARPA project on ‘‘internetworking’’ became the origin for the ‘‘Internet’’—a network of networks linked by several layers of protocols such as TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol), which quickly developed into the actual standard.

Only after the government funding had solved many of the most essential technical issues and had shaped a number of the most characteristic features of the Internet, did private sector entrepreneurs start Internet-related ventures and quickly developed user-oriented enhancements. Nevertheless, the Internet did not make a promising start and it took more than ten years before significant numbers of networks were connected. In 1980, the Internet had less than two hundred hosts, and during the next four years the number of hosts went up only to 1000. Only when the Internet reached the educational and business community of PC users in the late 1980s, did it start to become an important economic and social phenomenon. The number of hosts began an explosive growth in the late 1980s—by 1988 there were over 50,000 hosts. An important and unforeseen side effect of this development became the creation of the Internet into a new electronic publishing medium. The electronic publishing development that excited most interest in the Internet was the World Wide Web, originally developed at the CERN High Energy Physics Laboratory in Geneva in 1989. Soon there were millions of documents on the Internet, and private PC users became excited by the joys of surfing the Internet. A number of firms such as AOL soon provided low-cost network access and a range of consumer-oriented information services. The Internet boom was also helped by the Clinton–Gore presidential election campaign on the ‘‘information superhighway’’ and by the amazing news reporting on the national information infrastructure in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, for many observers it was astounding how fast the number of hosts on the Internet increased during the next few years—from more than 1 million in 1992 to 72 million in 1999.

The overwhelming success of the PC and of the Internet tends to hide the fact that its arrival marked only a branching in computer history and not a sequence. (Take, for example, the case of mainframe computers, which still continue to run, being of great importance to government facilities and the private sector (such as banks and insurance companies), or the case of supercomputers, being of the utmost significance for modern science and engineering.) Furthermore, it should be noted that only a small part of the computer applications performed today is easily observable—98 percent of programmable CPUs are used in embedded systems such as automobiles, medical devices, washing machines and mobile telephones.

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topics for computer science research paper

224 Research Topics on Technology & Computer Science

Are you new to the world of technology? Do you need topics related to technology to write about? No worries, Custom-writing.org experts are here to help! In this article, we offer you a multitude of creative and interesting technology topics from various research areas, including information technology and computer science. So, let’s start!

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  • 🔝 Top 10 Topics

👋 Introduction

  • 💾 Top 10 Computer Science Topics

⚙ Artificial Intelligence

💉 biotechnology, 📡 communications and media.

  • 💻Computer Science & Engineering

🔋 Energy & Power Technologies

🍗 food technology, 😷 medical devices & diagnostics, 💊 pharmaceutical technologies.

  • 🚈 Transportation

✋ Conclusion

🔍 references, 🔝 top 10 technology topics.

  • The difference between VR and AR
  • Is genetic engineering ethical?
  • Can digital books replace print ones?
  • The impact of virtual reality on education
  • 5 major fields of robotics
  • The risks and dangers of biometrics
  • Nanotechnology in medicine
  • Digital technology’s impact on globalization
  • Is proprietary software less secure than open-source?
  • The difference between deep learning and machine learning

Is it a good thing that technologies and computer science are developing so fast? No one knows for sure. There are too many different opinions, and some of them are quite radical! However, we know that technologies have changed our world once and forever. Computer science affects every single area of people’s lives.

Arthur clarke quote.

Just think about Netflix . Can you imagine that 24 years ago it didn’t exist? How did people live without it? Well, in 2024, the entertainment field has gone so far that you can travel anywhere while sitting in your room. All you would have to do is just order a VR (virtual reality) headset. Moreover, personal computers give an unlimited flow of information, which has changed the entire education system.

Every day, technologies become smarter and smaller. A smartphone in your pocket may be as powerful as your laptop. No doubt, the development of computer science builds our future. It is hard to count how many research areas in technologies and computer science are there. But it is not hard to name the most important of them.

Artificial intelligence tops the charts, of course. However, engineering and biotechnology are not far behind. Communications and media are developing super fast as well. The research is also done in areas that make our lives better and more comfortable. The list of them includes transport, food and energy, medical, and pharmaceutical areas.

So check out our list of 204 most relevant computer science research topics below. Maybe one of them will inspire you to do revolutionary research!

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💾 Top 10 Computer Science Research Topics

💡 technologies & computer science: research ideas.

Many people probably picture robots from the movie “I, Robot” when they hear about artificial intelligence. However, it is far from the truth.

AI is meant to be as close to a rational way of thinking as possible. It uses binary logic (just like computers) to help solve problems in many areas. Applied AI is only aimed at one task. A generalized AI branch is looking into a human-like machine that can learn to do anything.

Robotic hand pressing keyboard laptop.

Applied AI already helps researchers in quantum physics and medicine. You deal with AI every day when online shops suggest some items based on your previous purchases. Siri and self-driving cars are also examples of applied AI.

Generalized AI is supposed to be a copy of multitasking human intelligence. However, it is still in the stage of development. Computer technology has yet to reach the level necessary for its creation.

One of the latest trends in this area is improving healthcare management. It is done through the digitalization of all the information in hospitals and even helping diagnose the patients.

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Also, privacy issues and facial recognition technologies are being researched. For example, some governments collect biometric data to reduce and even predict crime.

Research Topics on Artificial Intelligence Technology

Since AI development is exceptionally relevant nowadays, it would be smart to invest your time and effort into researching it. Here are some ideas on artificial intelligence research topics that you can look into:

  • What areas of life machine learning are the most influential?
  • How to choose the right algorithm for machine learning ?
  • Supervised vs. unsupervised machine learning : compare & contrast
  • Reinforcement machine learning algorithms
  • Deep learning as a subset of machine learning
  • Deep learning & artificial neural networks
  • How do artificial neural networks work?
  • A comparison of model-free & model-based reinforcement learning algorithms
  • Reinforcement learning: single vs. multi-agent
  • How do social robots interact with humans?
  • Robotics in NASA
  • Natural language processing: chatbots
  • How does natural language processing produce natural language?
  • Natural language processing vs. machine learning
  • Artificial intelligence in computer vision
  • Computer vision application: autonomous vehicles
  • Recommender systems’ approaches
  • Recommender systems: content-based recommendation vs. collaborative filtering
  • Internet of things & artificial intelligence: the interconnection
  • How much data do the Internet of things devices generate?

Biotechnology uses living organisms to modify different products. Even the simple thing as baking bread is a process of biotechnology. However, nowadays, this area went as far as changing the organisms’ DNA. Genetics and biochemistry are also a part of the biotechnology area.

The development of this area allows people to cure diseases with the help of new medicines. In agriculture, more and more research is done on biological treatment and modifying plants. Biotechnology is even involved in the production of our groceries, household chemicals, and textiles.

Trends in biotechnology.

There are many exciting trends in biotechnology now that carry the potential of changing our world! For example, scientists are working on creating personalized drugs. This is feasible once they apply computer science to analyze people’s DNA.

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Also, thanks to using new technologies, doctors can collect exact data and provide the patients with correct diagnosis and treatment. Now, you don’t even need to leave your place to get a doctor’s check-up. Just use telehealth!

Data management is developing in the biotechnology area as well. Thanks to that, doctors and scientists can store and access a tremendous amount of information.

The most exciting is the fact that new technology enables specialists to assess genetic information to treat and prevent illnesses! It may solve the problem of some diseases that were considered untreatable before.

Research Topics on Biotechnology

You can use the following examples of research questions on biotechnology for presentation or even a PhD paper! Here is a wide range of topics on biotechnology and its relation to agriculture, nanotechnology, and many more:

  • Self-sufficient protein supply and biotechnology in farming
  • Evaporation vs. evapotranspiration
  • DNA cloning and a southern blot
  • Pharmacogenetics & personalized drugs
  • Is cloning “playing God”?
  • Pharmacogenetics : cancer medicines
  • How much can we control our genetics, at what point do we cease to be human?
  • Bio ethics and stem cell research
  • Genetic engineering: gene therapy
  • The potential benefits of genetic engineering
  • Genetic engineering: dangers and opportunities
  • Mycobacterium tuberculosis : counting the proteins
  • Plant genetic enhancement: developing resistance to scarcity
  • Y-chromosome genotyping: the case of South Africa
  • Agricultural biotechnology: GMO crops
  • How are new vaccines developed?
  • Nanotechnology in treating HIV
  • Allergenic potential & biotechnology
  • Whole-genome sequencing in biotechnology
  • Genes in heavy metal tolerance: an overview
  • Food biotechnology & food-borne illnesses
  • How to eliminate heat-resistant microorganisms with ultraviolet?
  • High-throughput screening & biotechnology
  • How do new food processing technologies affect bacteria related to Aspalathus Linearis?
  • Is sweet sorghum suitable for the production of bioethanol in Africa?
  • How can pesticides help to diagnose cancer?
  • How is embelin used to prevent cancer?

One of the first areas that technologies affected was communications and media. People from the last century couldn’t have imagined how easy it would be to get connected with anyone! Internet connection starts appearing even in the most remote places.

Nowadays, media is used not only for social interaction but for business development and educational purposes as well. You can now start an entirely online business or use special tools to promote the existing one. Also, many leading universities offer online degrees.

In communications and media, AI has been playing the role of enhancement recently. The technology helps create personalized content for always demanding consumers.

Developing media also create numerous job opportunities. For instance, recently, an influencer has become a trending career. Influencers always use the most relevant communication tools available. At the moment, live videos and podcasting are on the top.

Now, you just need to reach your smartphone to access all the opportunities mentioned above! You can apply for a college, find a job, or reach out to all your followers online. It is hard to imagine how far communication and media can go…

Communications and Media Technology Research Topics

There are quite a few simple yet exciting ideas for media and communications technology research topics. Hopefully, you will find THE ONE amongst these Information and Communications Technology (ICT) research proposal topics:

  • New media: the importance of ethics in the process of communication
  • The development of computer-based communication over the last decade
  • How have social media changed communication?
  • Media during the disasters : increasing panic or helping reduce it?
  • Authorities’ media representations in different countries: compare & contrast
  • Do people start preferring newspapers to new media again?
  • How has the Internet changed media?
  • Communication networks
  • The impact of social media on super bowl ads
  • Communications: technology and personal contact
  • New content marketing ideas
  • Media exposure and its influence on adolescents
  • The impact of mass media on personal socialization
  • Internet and interactive media as an advertising tool
  • Music marketing in a digital world
  • How do people use hype in the media?
  • Psychology of videoblog communication
  • Media & the freedom of speech
  • Is it possible to build trustful relationships in virtual communication?
  • How to maintain privacy in social media ?
  • Communication technologies & cyberbullying
  • How has the interpersonal communication changed with the invention of computers?
  • The future of the communication technologies
  • Yellow journalism in new media
  • How enterprises use ICT to get a competitive advantage?
  • Healthcare and ICT
  • Can we live without mass media ?
  • Mass media and morality in the 21st century

💻 Computer Science & Engineering

If you have ever wondered how computers work, you better ask a professional in computer science and engineering. This major combines two different, yet interconnected, worlds of machines.

Computer science takes care of the computer’s brain. It usually includes areas of study, such as programming languages and algorithms. Scientists also recognize three paradigms in terms of the computer science field.

For the rationalist paradigm, computer science is a part of math. The technocratic paradigm is focused on software engineering, while the scientific one is all about natural sciences. Interestingly enough, the latter can also be found in the area of artificial intelligence!

Stephen Hawking quote.

On the other hand, computer engineering maintains a computer’s body – hardware and software. It relies quite heavily on electrical engineering. And only the combination of computer science and engineering gives a full understanding of the machine.

If talking about trends and innovations, artificial intelligence development is probably the main one in the area of computer science technology. Big data is the field that has been extremely popular in recent years.

Cybersecurity is and will be one of the leading research fields in our Information Age. The latest trend in computer science and engineering is also virtual reality.

Computer Science Research Topics

If you want to find a good idea for your thesis or you are just preparing for a speech, check out this list of research topics in computer science and engineering:

  • How are virtual reality & human perception connected?
  • The future of computer-assisted education
  • Computer science & high-dimensional data modeling
  • Computer science: imperative vs. declarative languages
  • The use of blockchain and AI for algorithmic regulations
  • Banking industry & blockchain technology
  • How does the machine architecture affect the efficiency of code?
  • Languages for parallel computing
  • How is mesh generation used for computational domains?
  • Ways of persistent data structure optimization
  • Sensor networks vs. cyber-physical system
  • The development of computer graphics: non-photorealistic rendering case
  • The development of the systems programming languages
  • Game theory & network economics
  • How can computational thinking affect science?
  • Theoretical computer science in functional analysis
  • The most efficient cryptographic protocols
  • Software security types: an overview
  • Is it possible to eliminate phishing?
  • Floating point & programming language

Without energy, no technological progress is possible. Scientists are continually working on improving energy and power technologies. Recently, efforts have been aimed at three main areas.

Developing new batteries and fuel types helps create less expensive ways of storing energy. For example, fuel cells can be used for passenger buses. They need to be connected to a source of fuel to work. However, it guarantees the constant production of electricity as long as they have fuel.

One of the potential trends of the next years is hydrogen energy storage. This method is still in the stage of development. It would allow the use of hydrogen instead of electricity.

Trends in energy technologies.

A smart grid is another area that uses information technology for the most efficient use of energy. For instance, the first-generation smart grid tracks the movement of electric energy on the go and sends the information back. It is a great way to correct the consumption of energy in real-time. More development is also done on the issue of electricity generation. It aims at technologies that can produce power from the sources that haven’t been used. The trends in this area include second-generation biofuels and photovoltaic glass.

Energy Technologies Research Topics

Since humanity cannot be using fossil fuels forever, the research in the area of energy can be extremely fruitful. The following list of energy and power technology research paper topics can give you an idea of where to dig:

  • How can fuel cells be used for stationary power generation?
  • Lithium-ion vs. lithium-air batteries: energy density
  • Are lithium-air batteries better than gasoline ?
  • Renewable energy usage: advantages and disadvantages
  • The nuclear power usage in the UAE
  • India’s solar installations
  • Gas price increasing and alternative energy sources
  • How can methods of energy transformation be applied with hydrogen energy?
  • Is hydrogen energy our future?
  • Thermal storage & AC systems
  • How to load balance using smart grid?
  • Distributed energy generation to optimize power waste
  • Is the smart energy network a solution to climate change ?
  • The future of the tidal power
  • The possibility of 3D printing of micro stirling engines
  • How can robots be used to adjust solar panels to weather?
  • Advanced biofuels & algae
  • Can photovoltaic glass be fully transparent?
  • Third-generation biofuels : algae vs. crop-based
  • Space-based solar power: myth or reality of the future?
  • Can smaller nuclear reactors be more efficient?
  • Inertial confinement fusion & creal energy
  • Renewable energy technologies: an overview
  • How can thorium change the nuclear power field?

The way we get our food has changed drastically with the technological development. Manufacturers look for ways to feed 7.5 billion people more efficiently. And the demand is growing every year. Now technology is not only used for packaging, but for producing and processing food as well.

Introducing robots into the process of manufacturing brings multiple benefits to the producer. Not only do they make it more cost-efficient, but they also reduce safety problems.

Surprisingly enough, you can print food on the 3D printer now! This technology is applied to produce soft food for people who can’t chew. NASA decided to use it for fun as well and printed a pizza!

Drones now help farmers to keep an eye on crops from above. It helps them see the full picture and analyze the current state of the fields. For example, a drone can spot a starting disease and save the crop.

The newest eco trends push companies to become more environmentally aware. They use technologies to create safer packaging. The issue of food waste is also getting more and more relevant. Consumers want to know that nothing is wasted. Thanks to the new technologies, the excess food is now used more wisely.

Food Technology Research Topics

If you are looking for qualitative research topics about technology in the food industry, here is a list of ideas you don’t want to miss:

  • What machines are used in the food industry?
  • How do robots improve safety in butchery?
  • Food industry & 3D printing
  • 3D printed food – a solution to help people with swallowing disorder?
  • Drones & precision agriculture
  • How is robotics used to create eco-friendly food packaging ?
  • Is micro packaging our future?
  • The development of edible cling film

Healthy food plastic bags.

  • Technology & food waste : what are the solutions?
  • Additives and preservatives & human gut microbiome
  • The effect of citric acid on the orange juice: physicochemical level
  • Vegetable oils in mass production: compare & contrast
  • Time-temperature indicators & food industry
  • Conventional vs. hydroponic farming
  • Food safety: a policy issue in agriculture today
  • How to improve the detection of parasites in food?
  • What are the newest technologies in the baking industry?
  • Eliminating byproducts in edible oils production
  • Cold plasma & biofilms
  • How good are the antioxidant peptides derived from plants?
  • Electronic nose in food industry and agriculture
  • The harm of polyphenols in food

Why does the life expectancy of people get higher and higher every year? One of the main aspects of it is the promotion of innovation in the medical area. For example, the development of equipment helps medical professionals to save many lives.

Thanks to information technology, the work is much more structured now in the medical area. The hospitals use tablets and the method of electronic medical records. It helps them to access and share the data more efficiently.

If talking about medical devices, emerging technologies save more lives than ever! For instance, operations done by robots are getting more and more popular. Don’t worry! Doctors are still in charge; they just control the robots from the other room. It allows operations to be less invasive and precise.

Moreover, science not only helps treat diseases but also prevent them! The medical research aims for the development of vaccines against deadly illnesses like malaria.

Some of the projects even sound more like crazy ideas from the future. But it is all happening right now! Scientists are working on the creation of artificial organs and the best robotic prosthetics.

All the technologies mentioned above are critical for successful healthcare management.

Medical Technology Research Topics

If you feel like saving lives is the purpose of your life, then technological research topics in the medical area are for you! These topics would also suit for your research paper:

  • How effective are robotic surgeries ?
  • Smart inhalers as the new solution for asthma treatment
  • Genetic counseling – a new way of preventing diseases?
  • The benefits of the electronic medical records
  • Erythrocytapheresis to treat sickle cell disease
  • Defibrillator & cardiac resynchronization therapy
  • Why do drug-eluting stents fail?
  • Dissolvable brain sensors: an overview
  • 3D printing for medical purposes
  • How soon will we be able to create artificial organs?
  • Wearable technologies & healthcare
  • Precision medicine based on genetics
  • Virtual reality devices for educational purposes in medical schools
  • The development of telemedicine
  • Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats as the way of treating diseases
  • Nanotechnology & cancer treatment
  • How safe is genome editing?
  • The trends in electronic diagnostic tools development
  • The future of the brain-machine interface
  • How does wireless communication help medical professionals in hospitals?

In the past years, technologies have been drastically changing the pharmaceutical industry. Now, a lot of processes are optimized with the help of information technology. The ways of prescribing and distributing medications are much more efficient today. Moreover, the production of medicines itself has changed.

For instance, electronic prior authorization is now applied by more than half of the pharmacies. It makes the process of acquiring prior authorization much faster and easier.

The high price of medicines is the number one reason why patients stop using prescriptions. Real-time pharmacy benefit may be the solution! It is a system that gives another perspective for the prescribers. While working with individual patients, they will be able to consider multiple factors with the help of data provided.

The pharmaceutical industry also adopts some new technologies to compete on the international level. They apply advanced data analytics to optimize their work.

Companies try to reduce the cost and boost the effectiveness of the medicines. That is why they look into technologies that help avoid failures in the final clinical trials.

The constant research in the area of pharma is paying off. New specialty drugs and therapies arrive to treat chronic diseases. However, there are still enough opportunities for development.

Pharmaceutical Technologies Research Topics

Following the latest trends in the pharmaceutical area, this list offers a wide range of creative research topics on pharmaceutical technologies:

  • Electronic prior authorization as a pharmacy technological trend
  • The effectiveness of medication therapy management
  • Medication therapy management & health information exchanges
  • Electronic prescribing of controlled substances as a solution for drug abuse issue
  • Do prescription drug monitoring programs really work?
  • How can pharmacists help with meaningful use?
  • NCPDP script standard for specialty pharmacies
  • Pharmaceutical technologies & specialty medications
  • What is the patient’s interest in the real-time pharmacy?
  • The development of the vaccines for AIDS
  • Phenotypic screening in pharmaceutical researches
  • How does cloud ERP help pharmaceutical companies with analytics?
  • Data security & pharmaceutical technologies
  • An overview of the DNA-encoded library technology
  • Pharmaceutical technologies: antibiotics vs. superbugs
  • Personalized medicine: body-on-a-chip approach
  • The future of cannabidiol medication in pain management
  • How is cloud technology beneficial for small pharmaceutical companies?
  • A new perspective on treatment: medicines from plants
  • Anticancer nanomedicine: a pharmaceutical hope

🚈 Transportation Technologies

We used to be focused on making transportation more convenient. However, nowadays, the focus is slowly switching to ecological issues.

It doesn’t mean that vehicles can’t be comfortable at the same time. That is why the development of electric and self-driving cars is on the peak.

Transportation technologies also address the issues of safety and traffic jams. There are quite many solutions suggested. However, it would be hard for big cities to switch to the other systems fast.

One of the solutions is using shared vehicle phone applications. It allows reducing the number of private cars on the roads. On the other hand, if more people start preferring private vehicles, it may cause even more traffic issues.

Transportation technologies.

The most innovative cities even start looking for more eco-friendly solutions for public transport. Buses are being replaced by electric ones. At the same time, the latest trend is using private electric vehicles such as scooters and bikes.

So that people use public transport more, it should be more accessible and comfortable. That is why the payment systems are also being updated. Now, all you would need is to download an app and buy a ticket in one click!

Transportation Technologies Research Topics

Here you can find the best information technology research topics related to transportation technologies:

  • How safe are self-driving cars ?
  • Electric vs. hybrid cars : compare & contrast
  • How to save your smart car from being hijacked?
  • How do next-generation GPS devices adjust the route for traffic?
  • Transportation technologies: personal transportation pods
  • High-speed rail networks in Japan
  • Cell phones during driving: threats and solutions
  • Transportation: electric cars effects
  • Teleportation: physics of the impossible
  • How soon we will see Elon Musk’s Hyperloop?
  • Gyroscopes as a solution for convenient public transportation
  • Electric trucks: the effect on logistics
  • Why were electric scooters banned in some cities in 2018?
  • Carbon fiber as an optional material for unit load devices
  • What are the benefits of the advanced transportation management systems?
  • How to make solar roadways more cost-effective?
  • How is blockchain applied in the transportation industry
  • Transportation technologies: an overview of the freight check-in
  • How do delivery companies use artificial intelligence?
  • Water-fueled cars: the technology of future or fantasy?
  • What can monitoring systems be used to manage curb space?
  • Inclusivity and accessibility in public transport: an overview
  • The development of the mobility-as-a-service

All in all, this article is a compilation of the 204 most interesting research topics on technology and computer science. It is a perfect source of inspiration for anyone who is interested in doing research in this area.

We have divided the topics by specific areas, which makes it easier for you to find your favorite one. There are 20 topics in each category, along with a short explanation of the most recent trends in the area.

You can choose one topic from artificial intelligence research topics and start working on it right away! There is also a wide selection of questions on biotechnology and engineering that are waiting to be answered.

Since media and communications are present in our everyday life and develop very fast, you should look into this area. But if you want to make a real change, you can’t miss on researching medical and pharmaceutical, food and energy, and transportation areas.

Of course, you are welcome to customize the topic you choose! The more creativity, the better! Maybe your research has the power to change something! Good luck, and have fun!

This might be interesting for you:

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  • Databases for Research & Education: Gale
  • The Complete Beginners’ Guide to Artificial Intelligence: Forbes
  • 8 Best Topics for Research and Thesis in Artificial Intelligence: GeeksForGeeks
  • Technology Is Changing Transportation, and Cities Should Adapt: Harvard Business Review
  • Five Technology Trends: Changing Pharmacy Practice Today and Tomorrow (Pharmacy Times)
  • Recent papers in Technology: Academia
  • Research: Michigan Tech
  • What 126 studies say about education technology: MIT News
  • Top 5 Topics in Information Technology: King University Online
  • Research in Technology Education-Some Areas of Need: Virginia Tech
  • Undergraduate Research Topics: Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
  • Student topics: QUT Science and Engineering
  • Developing research questions: Monash University
  • Biotechnology: Definition, Examples, & Applications (Britannica)
  • Medical Laboratory Science Student Research Projects: Rush University
  • Clinical Laboratory Science: Choosing a Research Topic (Library Resource Guide for FGCU Clinical Lab Science students)
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Thanks so much for this! Glad I popped by and I sure did find what I was looking for.

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Thanks for your kind words, Sanny! We look forward to seeing you again!

Thank you very for the best topics of research across all science and art projects. The best thing that I am interested to is computer forensics and security specifically for IT students.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hello, glad to hear from you!

Computer science focuses on creating programs and applications, while information technology focuses on using computer systems and networks. What computer science jobs are there. It includes software developers, web developers, software engineers, and data scientists.

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Fall 2024 CSCI Special Topics Courses

Cloud computing.

Meeting Time: 09:45 AM‑11:00 AM TTh  Instructor: Ali Anwar Course Description: Cloud computing serves many large-scale applications ranging from search engines like Google to social networking websites like Facebook to online stores like Amazon. More recently, cloud computing has emerged as an essential technology to enable emerging fields such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and Machine Learning. The exponential growth of data availability and demands for security and speed has made the cloud computing paradigm necessary for reliable, financially economical, and scalable computation. The dynamicity and flexibility of Cloud computing have opened up many new forms of deploying applications on infrastructure that cloud service providers offer, such as renting of computation resources and serverless computing.    This course will cover the fundamentals of cloud services management and cloud software development, including but not limited to design patterns, application programming interfaces, and underlying middleware technologies. More specifically, we will cover the topics of cloud computing service models, data centers resource management, task scheduling, resource virtualization, SLAs, cloud security, software defined networks and storage, cloud storage, and programming models. We will also discuss data center design and management strategies, which enable the economic and technological benefits of cloud computing. Lastly, we will study cloud storage concepts like data distribution, durability, consistency, and redundancy. Registration Prerequisites: CS upper div, CompE upper div., EE upper div., EE grad, ITI upper div., Univ. honors student, or dept. permission; no cr for grads in CSci. Complete the following Google form to request a permission number from the instructor ( https://forms.gle/6BvbUwEkBK41tPJ17 ).

CSCI 5980/8980 

Machine learning for healthcare: concepts and applications.

Meeting Time: 11:15 AM‑12:30 PM TTh  Instructor: Yogatheesan Varatharajah Course Description: Machine Learning is transforming healthcare. This course will introduce students to a range of healthcare problems that can be tackled using machine learning, different health data modalities, relevant machine learning paradigms, and the unique challenges presented by healthcare applications. Applications we will cover include risk stratification, disease progression modeling, precision medicine, diagnosis, prognosis, subtype discovery, and improving clinical workflows. We will also cover research topics such as explainability, causality, trust, robustness, and fairness.

Registration Prerequisites: CSCI 5521 or equivalent. Complete the following Google form to request a permission number from the instructor ( https://forms.gle/z8X9pVZfCWMpQQ6o6  ).

Visualization with AI

Meeting Time: 04:00 PM‑05:15 PM TTh  Instructor: Qianwen Wang Course Description: This course aims to investigate how visualization techniques and AI technologies work together to enhance understanding, insights, or outcomes.

This is a seminar style course consisting of lectures, paper presentation, and interactive discussion of the selected papers. Students will also work on a group project where they propose a research idea, survey related studies, and present initial results.

This course will cover the application of visualization to better understand AI models and data, and the use of AI to improve visualization processes. Readings for the course cover papers from the top venues of AI, Visualization, and HCI, topics including AI explainability, reliability, and Human-AI collaboration.    This course is designed for PhD students, Masters students, and advanced undergraduates who want to dig into research.

Registration Prerequisites: Complete the following Google form to request a permission number from the instructor ( https://forms.gle/YTF5EZFUbQRJhHBYA  ). Although the class is primarily intended for PhD students, motivated juniors/seniors and MS students who are interested in this topic are welcome to apply, ensuring they detail their qualifications for the course.

Visualizations for Intelligent AR Systems

Meeting Time: 04:00 PM‑05:15 PM MW  Instructor: Zhu-Tian Chen Course Description: This course aims to explore the role of Data Visualization as a pivotal interface for enhancing human-data and human-AI interactions within Augmented Reality (AR) systems, thereby transforming a broad spectrum of activities in both professional and daily contexts. Structured as a seminar, the course consists of two main components: the theoretical and conceptual foundations delivered through lectures, paper readings, and discussions; and the hands-on experience gained through small assignments and group projects. This class is designed to be highly interactive, and AR devices will be provided to facilitate hands-on learning.    Participants will have the opportunity to experience AR systems, develop cutting-edge AR interfaces, explore AI integration, and apply human-centric design principles. The course is designed to advance students' technical skills in AR and AI, as well as their understanding of how these technologies can be leveraged to enrich human experiences across various domains. Students will be encouraged to create innovative projects with the potential for submission to research conferences.

Registration Prerequisites: Complete the following Google form to request a permission number from the instructor ( https://forms.gle/Y81FGaJivoqMQYtq5 ). Students are expected to have a solid foundation in either data visualization, computer graphics, computer vision, or HCI. Having expertise in all would be perfect! However, a robust interest and eagerness to delve into these subjects can be equally valuable, even though it means you need to learn some basic concepts independently.

Sustainable Computing: A Systems View

Meeting Time: 09:45 AM‑11:00 AM  Instructor: Abhishek Chandra Course Description: In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the pervasiveness, scale, and distribution of computing infrastructure: ranging from cloud, HPC systems, and data centers to edge computing and pervasive computing in the form of micro-data centers, mobile phones, sensors, and IoT devices embedded in the environment around us. The growing amount of computing, storage, and networking demand leads to increased energy usage, carbon emissions, and natural resource consumption. To reduce their environmental impact, there is a growing need to make computing systems sustainable. In this course, we will examine sustainable computing from a systems perspective. We will examine a number of questions:   • How can we design and build sustainable computing systems?   • How can we manage resources efficiently?   • What system software and algorithms can reduce computational needs?    Topics of interest would include:   • Sustainable system design and architectures   • Sustainability-aware systems software and management   • Sustainability in large-scale distributed computing (clouds, data centers, HPC)   • Sustainability in dispersed computing (edge, mobile computing, sensors/IoT)

Registration Prerequisites: This course is targeted towards students with a strong interest in computer systems (Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Networking, Databases, etc.). Background in Operating Systems (Equivalent of CSCI 5103) and basic understanding of Computer Networking (Equivalent of CSCI 4211) is required.

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April 18, 2024

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What a seminal economics paper tells us about the future of creativity

by Benjamin Kessler, George Mason University

creative AI

Full disclosure: ChatGPT didn't write this—but theoretically, it could have. Generative AI has progressed to the point where its output seems comparable in style and quality to that of human content creators. At first glance, at least. As a result, human creatives are feeling a bit defensive these days, their fears of obsolescence apparently confirmed by wave after wave of media layoffs and ominous suggestions from Hollywood studios.

But creatives can take comfort from an unlikely source: a canonical model from financial economics . That is the main idea of a recent working paper by Jiasun Li, an associate professor of finance at the Donald G. Costello College of Business at George Mason University.

Li's publication hinges on an analogy between the ChatGPT-era creative marketplace and a seminal 1980 American Economic Review paper by Sanford J. Grossman and Joseph Stiglitz. Grossman and Stiglitz argued that the concept of efficient financial markets contained a paradox: If all available information about an asset were perfectly priced, there would be no point in spending time and resources trying to beat the market.

But with no one working to outsmart the consensus, no new information would ever come to light, making market efficiency impossible.

"Prices can incorporate information because those who have information take action, that is, make trades in the financial markets," Li says.

How does this relate to content creation and AI? In Li's view, the figment of perfectly efficient financial markets corresponds to a creative scene devoid of human imagination . Li likens generative AI models such as ChatGPT to a "parrot, [spitting] out the most statistically likely subsequent sentences" in response to a prompt.

To achieve this goal, ChatGPT works by learning statistical distributions from the 570 gigabytes of internet-sourced existing text (and counting) on which it was trained. Therefore, its capabilities come from existing content and cannot reflect all new happenings in the physical world.

That's why the creative industry needs "active investors," i.e., creative humans if it is to attain an "equilibrium"—or a stable state that market systems tend to strive towards.

Li's working paper models a creative marketplace where generative AI has absorbed, or "priced-in," virtually the entirety of existing codified human knowledge. Even so, the model finds consistent profit opportunities in human content creation. At the same time, there is also no all-human equilibrium in Li's model; the profit potential of generative AI suggests that the algorithms are here to stay.

"Passive investment has a place but will not entirely take over active investment," Li concludes. "There's an interior equilibrium, even though you can argue over what the equilibrium point is."

Li candidly states that his still-early-stage, not-yet-peer-reviewed working paper was primarily intended to be a provocation and, as such, may not tell the whole story. "Price efficiency is only one perspective. There may be other theories, although I believe the forces I'm talking about are of first order."

He advises human content creators who are feeling threatened by technology, "Don't be afraid. There will be room for you. Just try to be good at what you do." He implies that partnering with AI models may soon become an indispensable creative skill. "AI's part of the work is the least creative part, the mundane part that is necessary for you to be creative."

As humans and algorithms gradually move toward equilibrium, Li envisions that "some human content creators are going to keep their job, although that doesn't mean every human is going to."

Li holds a similar attitude toward generative AI's increasing use in academia. "The majority of academic papers apply mature methodologies and techniques to new datasets. They generate results following easy-to-evaluate paradigms. Such papers are often the easiest to publish, but they are also the most likely to be replaced by AI."

The working paper is available in the SSRN Electronic Journal .

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ScienceDaily

Mess is best: Disordered structure of battery-like devices improves performance

The energy density of supercapacitors -- battery-like devices that can charge in seconds or a few minutes -- can be improved by increasing the 'messiness' of their internal structure.

Researchers led by the University of Cambridge used experimental and computer modelling techniques to study the porous carbon electrodes used in supercapacitors. They found that electrodes with a more disordered chemical structure stored far more energy than electrodes with a highly ordered structure.

Supercapacitors are a key technology for the energy transition and could be useful for certain forms of public transport, as well as for managing intermittent solar and wind energy generation, but their adoption has been limited by poor energy density.

The researchers say their results, reported in the journal Science , represent a breakthrough in the field and could reinvigorate the development of this important net-zero technology.

Like batteries, supercapacitors store energy, but supercapacitors can charge in seconds or a few minutes, while batteries take much longer. Supercapacitors are far more durable than batteries, and can last for millions of charge cycles. However, the low energy density of supercapacitors makes them unsuitable for delivering long-term energy storage or continuous power.

"Supercapacitors are a complementary technology to batteries, rather than a replacement," said Dr Alex Forse from Cambridge's Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who led the research. "Their durability and extremely fast charging capabilities make them useful for a wide range of applications."

A bus, train or metro powered by supercapacitors, for example, could fully charge in the time it takes to let passengers off and on, providing it with enough power to reach the next stop. This would eliminate the need to install any charging infrastructure along the line. However, before supercapacitors are put into widespread use, their energy storage capacity needs to be improved.

While a battery uses chemical reactions to store and release charge, a supercapacitor relies on the movement of charged molecules between porous carbon electrodes, which have a highly disordered structure. "Think of a sheet of graphene, which has a highly ordered chemical structure," said Forse. "If you scrunch up that sheet of graphene into a ball, you have a disordered mess, which is sort of like the electrode in a supercapacitor."

Because of the inherent messiness of the electrodes, it's been difficult for scientists to study them and determine which parameters are the most important when attempting to improve performance. This lack of clear consensus has led to the field getting a bit stuck.

Many scientists have thought that the size of the tiny holes, or nanopores, in the carbon electrodes was the key to improved energy capacity. However, the Cambridge team analysed a series of commercially available nanoporous carbon electrodes and found there was no link between pore size and storage capacity.

Forse and his colleagues took a new approach and used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy -- a sort of 'MRI' for batteries -- to study the electrode materials. They found that the messiness of the materials -- long thought to be a hindrance -- was in fact the key to their success.

"Using NMR spectroscopy, we found that energy storage capacity correlates with how disordered the materials are -- the more disordered materials are able to store more energy," said first author Xinyu Liu, a PhD candidate co-supervised by Forse and Professor Dame Clare Grey. "Messiness is something that's hard to measure -- it's only possible thanks to new NMR and simulation techniques, which is why messiness is a characteristic that's been overlooked in this field."

When analysing the electrode materials with NMR spectroscopy, a spectrum with different peaks and valleys is produced. The position of the peak indicates how ordered or disordered the carbon is. "It wasn't our plan to look for this, it was a big surprise," said Forse. "When we plotted the position of the peak against energy capacity, a striking correlation came through -- the most disordered materials had a capacity almost double that of the most ordered materials."

So why is mess good? Forse says that's the next thing the team is working on. More disordered carbons store ions more efficiently in their nanopores, and the team are hoping to use these results to design better supercapacitors. The messiness of the materials is determined at the point they are synthesised.

"We want to look at new ways of making these materials, to see how far messiness can take you in terms of improving energy storage," said Forse. "It could be a turning point for a field that's been stuck for a little while. Clare and I started working on this topic over a decade ago, and it's exciting to see a lot of our previous fundamental work now having a clear application."

The research was supported in part by the Cambridge Trusts, the European Research Council, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

  • Energy Technology
  • Energy and Resources
  • Nuclear Energy
  • Solar Energy
  • Materials Science
  • Potential energy
  • Battery electric vehicle
  • Quantum dot
  • Battery (electricity)

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Cambridge . The original text of this story is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

  • Xinyu Liu, Dongxun Lyu, Céline Merlet, Matthew J. A. Leesmith, Xiao Hua, Zhen Xu, Clare P. Grey, Alexander C. Forse. Structural disorder determines capacitance in nanoporous carbons . Science , 2024; 384 (6693): 321 DOI: 10.1126/science.adn6242

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