The chair belongs to the Department of Computer Science. It was founded in 1998, and directed since then by Professor Bischof.

A recurring theme of the research activities at the Institute for Scientific Computing is the interplay of methods from computer science with mathematics and engineering or natural sciences. Problems occurring in practice are often too complex to be solved with techniques from a single discipline. The enormous requirements with respect to data handling and computational power can be accommodated only with an interdisciplinary approach. Here, the central roles of computer science are to keep the complexity at a manageable level by making use of problem-inherent structure, and to provide appropriate software tools that allow users from technical or scientific disciplines to easily benefit from algorithms derived this way.