MSc Advanced Computing Science

Key details

MSC ADVANCED COMPUTING SCIENCE

Start Year

2023

Attendance

Full Time

Award

Degree of Master of Science

Duration (years)

Program your future, just the way you want it. Whether you’re an aspiring programmer, software engineer, data or computer scientist, this Master’s course is the ideal opportunity to set yourself apart from other graduates.

Starting from your BSc degree in computing science (or equivalent), you’ll broaden and deepen your knowledge to an advanced level in research-led subjects such as programming language paradigms, artificial intelligence, cyber security, data science, computer graphics and vision.

Your studies will culminate in an MSc research project on a suitable topic of your choice – giving you the chance to showcase everything you’ve learned and demonstrate your research abilities. The emphasis on research is a perfect preparation for the job market once you graduate or alternatively, to do further research studies.

About

From day one, you’ll be immersed in the expertise of our world-leading research team who work at the cutting edge of computing science.

You’ll study key core subjects including our flagship module Advanced Programming. This will cover historical, established and upcoming programming languages, compilers and interpreters, functional languages, assembly and intermediate languages, code optimisation, high performance computing, software testing and modern software frameworks. The final deliverable of this module will see you produce a prototype of a professional standard software product to tackle a real-world problem. You’ll develop this in groups or individually, following industrial software engineering practice and guidelines.

Your compulsory Research Techniques module will help you master crucial skills such as writing scientific reports and analysing and critically reviewing scientific publications. You will also develop your ability to analyse and process big data resources using basic and advanced statistical methods.

It’s all brought to life in our specialist MSc lab with humanoid robots, haptic feedback devices, optical motion capture and highres video cameras and mainstream Virtual Reality (VR) hardware.

Thanks to our strong ties with the IT and computing industries, we're able to shape our course content and coursework projects based on current trends and real-world problems. This ensures that your experience is aligned with the industries that you may well be moving into after your course.

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Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the courses listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the regular review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. Changes may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will inform students.

Assessment for Year 1

We have a mixture of individual and group assessments. These include written work, presentations or demonstrations, and exams (closed and/or time-limited assessment). They combine theoretical understanding with practical application and are designed to test the range of skills and competencies required for the learning outcomes of each module. The balance of assessment types varies according to the options chosen. Additionally, there is an individual project which is assessed through a combination of written work and demonstration or presentation.

You’ll be assessed by a combination of: Examination/course test, Demonstrations/Presentation, Project and Written assignments.

Structure

Our Master’s programme consists of a series of advanced level modules to develop your skills and knowledge, as well as a dissertation that gives you the chance to complete your own research project.

Your dissertation counts for 60 (out of a total of 180) credits and you can either choose a topic from a list of projects set by the academic staff or propose your own suitable subject. Recent dissertation topics include:

Comparing the Unreal and Unity games engines by developing a first person shooter game
Creating an augmented reality (AR) game on mobile devices
Midi to tablature transcription
Sentiment polarity classification of tweets using supervised models
Reconstructing speech from articulatory data
Comparing MPI and GPU Computing in the Cloud
Programming the Nao robot to play draughts
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in games

You have until mid to late August to complete the project, which will be assessed based on the dissertation itself and a demonstration of your final deliverable.

Your remaining 120 credits are made up of six 20-credit modules. Two of these are compulsory modules: Research Techniques and Advanced Programming. You’ll then be able to select four optional modules from a range of topics including: artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, information visualisation, computer vision, cyber security, audio-visual processing, ubiquitous computing, data science and more.

Teaching and Learning

Teaching

You’ll have an average of 15 hours of contact time per week with teaching staff through lectures, laboratory sessions and seminars – though this may vary depending on your module choices.

Most modules are taught mainly through lectures and laboratory sessions, led by our experienced lecturing staff. You’ll also benefit from your lab sessions being facilitated by postgraduate associate tutors who are experts in your specific subject.

Our class sizes are relatively small – ranging from 15-30 students – meaning that you’ll have more opportunity to engage directly with our academics.

Independent study

The very nature of a Master’s course means that you'll spend a lot of time carrying out independent study. On top of your taught sessions, you’ll spend at least 25 hours a week on independent study, coursework assignments and projects.

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Open Days

You must discuss and agree your module choices with the Course Director, prior to selection, to ensure you are not duplicating any prior learning or experience.

Assessment for Year 1

You’ll be assessed by a combination of: Examination/course test, Demonstrations/Presentation, Project and Written assignments.

Compulsory Modules

RESEARCH METHODS

Code CMP-7030Y

Credits 20

This module aims to prepare postgraduate students with necessary intellectual and practical skills for successfully carrying out research work for their MSc Dissertation in Computing Sciences and Computational Biology. Specifically, it teaches research methodologies, techniques and tools used in computing sciences. More importantly, it provides systematic training to enhance students' transferable skills and their understanding in ethics, social and legal issues involved in computing professions.

ADVANCED PROGRAMMING

Code CMP-7009A

Credits 20

The advanced programming module aims to take your understanding of programming languages beyond their mere application in real world apps. As such, the emphasis of the module is on the architecture of programming languages, classified into paradigms that include procedural, object-oriented and functional. In particular, the functional or “declarative” paradigm will be covered in depth. Another substantial part is on compilers and interpreters, i.e. programs that turn higher level programs into machine language or alternatively, transpilers, that translate to another established language. Code optimisation, high performance computing (HPC) and parallel programming concepts will be covered including applications of GPU programming using CUDA and OpenCL. Any General Purpose Language (GPL), old and new, may be used in lecture note examples. Applications of functional programming will adopt the F# functional programming language. IMPORTANT NOTE: This module does not cover web- or mobile app-based programming nor “advanced software engineering” concepts.

DISSERTATION

Code CMP-7027X

Credits 60

In this module, each Masters student is required to carry out project work with substantial research and practical elements on a specified topic for their MSc dissertation from January to late August. The topic can be chosen and allocated from the lists of proposals from faculty members, or proposed by students themselves with an agreement from their supervisor and also an approval from the module organiser. The work may be undertaken as part of a large collaborative or group project. A dissertation must be written as the outcome of the module.

Optional A Modules

(40 credits)

HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION

Code CMP-7018A

Credits 20

Human Computer Interaction (or UX) covers a very wide range of devices, including conventional computers, mobile devices and “hidden” computing devices. In this module you will learn about interactions from a variety of perspectives, such as cognitive psychology, ethnographic methods, security issues, UI failures, the principles of good user experience, heuristic and experimental evaluation approaches and the needs of a range of different audiences.

DATA MINING

Code CMP-7023B

Credits 20

This module is designed for postgraduate students studying on MSc courses. You will explore the methodology of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD). You will cover each stage of the KDD process, including preliminary data exploration and visualisation, data cleansing, pre-processing, various data analysis tasks, model evaluation and model exploitation. In terms of data analysis, we will focus on clustering, classification, association rule induction and text mining. You will explore a number of algorithms for each tasks and also cover ensembles. Through this module, you will gain knowledge of algorithms and methods for data analysis, as well as practical experience programming in Python using popular libraries such as Pandas, Scikit-learn and Seaborne.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Code CMP-7028B

Credits 20

This module will introduce you to core techniques in Artificial Intelligence. Topics covered may include state space representation and search algorithms, knowledge representation, expert systems, Bayesian networks, Markov Models, Neural networks, Deep learning and an Introduction to Robotics and Drone.

INTRODUCTION TO CYBER SECURITY

Code CMP-7034A

Credits 20

This module provides a broad understanding of the core topics and issues relating to the rapidly evolving world of cyber security. As security becomes an increasingly important part of our daily lives, then it is essential to develop an understanding of the theories of security and their application to the wider world. Introduction to Cyber Security covers topics including: the value of data and the role of security, of risk and threat modelling, human aspects of cyber security, social engineering, deception, and cyber and information warfare. The module prepares you with essential knowledge and understanding of cyber security and provides the tools for further study and research in specialist areas.

DEVELOPING SECURE SOFTWARE

Code CMP-7038B

Credits 20

This module provides a practical introduction to Cyber Security, focusing on methods, tools and techniques for delivering robust, usable and secure web-based software. Students will learn the importance of designing and developing secure software by evaluating a range of software security threats and vulnerabilities, then mitigating these potential impacts. The module also covers ethical hacking and structured approaches to security testing. Groups will be created in week 2 and you will then work as a small development team from weeks 2 to 12, with the module running like a standard industry development project. This will involve your team completing everything from early research of security vulnerabilities and threats through to full development of a secure and usable web-based software system. Please note we do not teach JavaScript, Node or PostgreSQL during this module, as you are expected to be able to code these already via previous course modules.

GAMES DEVELOPMENT

Code CMP-7042B

Credits 20

The Games Development module has a strong hands-on element to it by focusing on the implementation of an industry-grade video game in one of the two well-established games engines, i.e. Unity and Unreal (UE5). As such, the taught element largely comprises tutorials on each of these two engines. However, a number of more traditional lectures on video game design, character animation, game AI and procedural content generation (PCG) are also delivered as part of the taught component. The practical is entirely focused on developing a video game with two evaluation stages, i.e. design and final implementation.

Optional B Modules

(40 credits)

WEB DEVELOPMENT

Code CMP-7003A

Credits 20

In this module you will learn about the current development and core technologies underpinning the Internet, WWW, web development, current issues (e.g. security), and its impact on society. In the practical part of the module you will learn how to build an effective web application using the current industry standard Web technologies, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You will learn how to handle Web requests and implement backend server, emphasising maintainability, security, accessibility and usability.

AUDIO AND VISUAL PROCESSING

Code CMP-7016A

Credits 20

This module explores how computers process audio and video signals. In the audio component, the focus is on understanding how humans produce speech and how this can be processed by computer for speech recognition and enhancement. Similarly, the visual component considers the human eye and camera, and how video is processed by computer. The theoretical material covered in lectures is reinforced with practical laboratory sessions. The module is coursework only and requires you to build a speech recogniser capable of recognising the names of students studying the module using both audio and visual speech information.

HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION

Code CMP-7018A

Credits 20

INFORMATION VISUALISATION

Code CMP-7022B

Credits 20

This module is an introduction to information visualisation. You will learn techniques for summarising and presenting a wide range of data. There is a strong emphasis on understanding the appropriate context and use of visualisation techniques. You will also learn about problems and techniques for dealing with large data flows and issues of integrating multiple data sources.

DATA MINING

Code CMP-7023B

Credits 20

COMPUTER VISION

Code CMP-7026B

Credits 20

Computer Vision is about “teaching machines how to see”. You will study methods for acquiring, analysing and understanding images in both lectures and laboratories. The practical exercises and projects that you undertake in the laboratory will support the underpinning theory and enable you to implement contemporary computer vision algorithms.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Code CMP-7028B

Credits 20

INTRODUCTION TO CYBER SECURITY

Code CMP-7034A

Credits 20

DEVELOPING SECURE SOFTWARE

Code CMP-7038B

Credits 20

UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING

Code CMP-7040B

Credits 20

In this module we will introduce the multifaceted topic of Ubiquitous Computing. You will learn about how computing power can be taken away from desktop computer setting and be applied anywhere. The module draws upon many other areas such as Signal Processing, Machine Learning, Human Computer Interaction, Internet of Things, Networks, and the use of hardware. This is a project and coursework orientated module with an emphasis on developing your own ideas to gain the skills needed to take the power of computing to be everywhere.

GAMES DEVELOPMENT

Code CMP-7042B

Credits 20

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Open Days

Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring and review of modules. Where this activity leads to significant change to a programme and modules, the University will endeavour to consult with affected students. The University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff. Availability of optional modules may be restricted owing to timetabling, lack of demand, or limited places. Where this is the case, you will be asked to make alternative module choices and you will be supported during this process.

Entry Requirements

Degree classification

Bachelors degree - 2.1 or equivalent

Degree subject

Computer Science or a related subject. Important Note: It is essential that applicants can demonstrate industry standard programming experience. This means that they have successfully completed at least one Computing or IT project where a general-purpose language like C, C++, C#, Java or Python was used and its development resulted in writing several thousands of lines of code (LOC).

Students for whom english is a foreign language

We welcome applications from students whose first language is not English. To ensure such students benefit from postgraduate study, we require evidence of proficiency in English. Our usual entry requirements are as follows:

IELTS: 6.0 (minimum 5.5 in two components only, with 6.0 in the other two)
PTE (Pearson): 64 (minimum 59 in two components only with 64 in the other two)

Test dates should be within two years of the course start date.

Other tests, including Cambridge English exams and the Trinity Integrated Skills in English are also accepted by the university. The full list of accepted tests can be found here: Accepted English Language Tests

INTO UEA also run pre-sessional courses which can be taken prior to the start of your course. For further information and to see if you qualify please contact intopre-sessional@uea.ac.uk.