Information technologies are changing the ways we understand and construct the world, by providing new ways of sensing, communicating and analyzing data. Informatics is the new science of information that underpins this revolution. While playing an ever-increasing role in the foundations of our new world, Informatics remains largely unknown to the general audience. This course introduced and led by Prof. Gérard Berry of the Collège de France, will explore seven key aspects of Informatics, with lectures developed from a longer series of eighteen lectures originally given at the Collège de France.

Teaching at the Collège does not deal with established knowledge but with knowledge in the making. The lectures will be complemented by six seminars, given by researchers from France and the UK, to highlight recent advances and current questions. These will include seminars on music, bioinformatics and neuroinformatics. The final seminar, by Prof. Chris Bishop, will chart newly developed approaches to inference from ambiguous or uncertain data, which will play an increasingly important role in the future development of the digital world.

The course is intended for students, teachers, policy makers, and, more generally, anybody interested in modern science. The inaugural lecture and final seminar are intended to be widely accessible. The intervening lectures and seminars still assume a non-specialist audience, provided it is ready to put some effort into engaging with the scientific and technical material.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh and the French Embassy in London are collaborating in a three-year programme of science events designed to explore and publicly present areas of science where both Scotland and France have a powerful presence.

This symposium will be the first in this series, intended to stimulate Franco-Scottish collaboration in science, to present new scientific ideas and their social and commercial implications to the public, and to increase awareness of French and Scottish science in each other’s country.