Advanced Computational Methods MSc, PGDip, 1-2 years, full-time

Semester 1

Core modules

• Advanced C++ Programming
• Internet and Cloud Computing
• Personal and Group Skills - this can be taken in either Semester

Option modules

Choose one option module (or choose two if you are going to take Personal and Group Skills in Semester 2) from:

• Advanced System Design
• System Re-engineering
• Software Reliability
• Advanced Web Technologies
• Agile Cloud Automation
• Communication and Concurrency
• Software Measurement and Quality Assurance
• Web Technologies
• Financial Mathematics 1
• Operational Research

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.

Semester 2

Core modules

• Algorithms for Bioinformatics
• Discrete Event Systems
• Game Theory in Computer Science
• Personal and Group Skills - this can be taken in either Semester

Option modules

• Service-Oriented Architectures
• Semantic Web
• Financial Services Information Systems
• Generative Development
• Analysis and Design of Algorithms
• Distributed Systems and Applications
• Compression Methods for Multimedia
• Cryptography and Internet Security

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.

Optional Industry Placement

Studying a 'with industry' masters degree is the perfect way for you to enhance your career prospects and deepen your understanding of your specific area of expertise. By experiencing real-world scenarios and applying your skills and knowledge to business challenges, you will gain a unique insight into how your studies can be utilised in industry. This will not only showcase your abilities to future employers, but will also enhance your studies when you return to University to complete your programme.

• Find out more about industrial placements

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.

Individual Project

Your course will conclude with an individual project (after your industry placement, if you have taken one). Using the experience gained during your course/placement, you will choose a challenging problem to work on and explore it by privately studying under the supervision of a member of the academic staff. (Students studying for a PGDip don't complete a project.)

A Selection of Recent MSc Projects

Computational Modelling of Tumour Cell Growth

Human tumours are very diverse in their appearance and growth patterns, but the understanding of the cell biological processes that underlie tumour growth is still very limited. This project, which was co-supervised by a medical expert, developed and implemented a software tool that simulates and visualises the growth of tumour cells, allowing researchers to investigate the effects of parameter values on the growth of the tumour.

Robust and Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are a new technology with a wide range of applications (from environment monitoring to surveillance) but subject to a number of energy constraints, many-to-one flows, and redundant low-rate data. Many routing protocols have been proposed for sensor networks that aim at achieving energy efficiency, but with little or no attention to robustness and fault-tolerance. This project addressed fault-tolerance in ad-hoc sensor network routing, namely the design and development of a robust and energy efficient routing protocol that distinguishes between local and large-scale traffic. A new multipath routing protocol was proposed and simulated which follows the 'number of hops' metric and employs a waiting time before transmitting messages to sink.

Smart Parking System

In large car parks that are nearly full, it may take drivers a lot of time to find an empty space. This project designed a smart parking system that can alleviate this problem by guiding drivers to empty spaces. Image processing methods were employed to process camera images in order to detect which spaces are free and which are occupied. A combination of a shortest-path algorithm and breadth-first search was used to determine directions that can be displayed at junctions throughout the car park in order to direct drivers to vacant spaces. A simulation was implemented to demonstrate the efficient operation of the system.

Analysis of Social Media

Social media such as Twitter collect a huge amount of data that is publicly available. The analysis of this data can be used to map out trends and predict events such as the outcome of elections. In this project you will choose a question you want to study using the data from a social media site and write a software that allows users to download and manage the data and, most importantly, to extract information from the data and to visualise the results.

Modules shown represent choices available to current students. The range of modules available and the content of any individual module may change in future years.