University of Tartu's Institute of Computer Science hosts more than 400 students across a range of Bachelors, Masters and doctoral curricula. The Institute's mission is to deliver world-class computer science education that is both relevant in practice and grounded on rigorous conceptual foundations.

On the research front, the institute is active in bioinformatics, natural language processing, cryptology, programming languages, distributed systems, and software engineering. Members of the institute publish in excess of 80 refereed papers per year. The Institute is a partner in the Estonian Center of Excellence in Computer Science and the Software Technology and Applications Competence Centre — an R&D centre that conducts industry-driven research projects in the fields of software engineering and data mining. The institute also participates in a number of EU-funded projects.

In 2012, the institute is organizing the 10th International Conference on Business Process Management.