Postgraduate Computing Science 2014-2015

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a major part of many people's lives. The Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content. The goal of the course is to introduce advanced techniques for Web 1.0 (XML and XML Schema), Web 2.0 (AJAX and mashups) and Web 3.0 (RDF, OWL, microformats and microdata). It also covers some data exploitation techniques.

This course aims to make students familiar with basic data mining and visualisation techniques and software tools. Students will learn how to analyse complex datasets by applying data pre-processing, exploration, clustering and classification, time series analysis, and many other techniques. This course will also cover text mining and qualitative modelling. Through this course students will be able to analyse real-world datasets in various domains and discover novel patterns from them. This course is particularly suitable for those who are interested in working as data analysts or data scientists in the future.

This course will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn to design and query databases. The course aims to teach the material using case studies from real-world applications. You will develop a critical understanding of the principal theories, principles and concepts, such as modelling techniques used in the design, administration and security of database systems. You will also learn core theoretical concepts such as relational algebra, file organisation and indexing. At the end of this course you will be able to design and build Web and cloud-based databases and have a critical understanding of how database-driven applications operate.

This course will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn about the processes associated with modern systems analysis and design. In the course you will develop a critical understanding of how to analyse and evaluate systems, and to design and specify corresponding functionalities in a succinct and official way. The course will introduce you to the tools and techniques used by business and system analysts/designers and cover the fundamental issues associated with software engineering and project management.

The course is primarily about the bidirectional interaction between new electronic technologies and changes in our society, addressing questions such as: What impact do E-Technologies have on society? What are the human factors involved in engaging in the electronic society? What is the impact of the electronic society on organisations? An overview of sectors: E-Commerce, E-Health, E-Learning, E-Governance, etc., and issues: Legal & ethical, security, privacy, intellectual property, software failure, digital divide. The course will study how societies and organisations must change to best utilise emerging technologies, and problems that arise.

Computational Intelligence covers a wide range of issues that developed in parallel with, or in competition to, symbolic AI. The major constituents of the field are bio-inspired computing – which deals with an ever expanding number of biologically related techniques – and fuzzy logic – which deals with reasoning under conditions of vagueness. In this course we will explore a number of topics that are core to Computational Intelligence (e.g. neural nets and evolutionary computing) and these will lead into some state-of-the-art approaches (such as fuzzy model-based reasoning and learning).

"Adaptation" in Computing Science refers to the process by which systems modify their behaviour based on the user and environment. At the core of this course is a collection of influential representations and algorithms for modelling users and the environment to enable adaptation. The course will cover algorithms for Recommender Systems, used to personalise product recommendations, and for Personalised Information Retrieval, used to deliver search results personalised for users and their context. The course will also cover current and future ideas for adaptive systems, such as Ambient Intelligence, where similar techniques are integrated into the real world using sensor networks.

This course provides the underpinnings of the degree in software project management. It sets out the framework of the enquiry about which processes are most useful and suitable for software development as explored during the degree. It explores the tension between traditional approaches and the agile approaches now used by many firms.

This module provides an introduction to a variety of technologies that are suitable for adoption in industrial software development. The module encourages students to research and evaluate new technologies, identi fying issues affecting their suitability for adoption in particular projects. It stimulatesdiscussion between students, encouraging the exchange of personal knowledge and experience. The module is assessed on topics proposed both by the tutor and by the students, allowing further investigation into relevant subjects of particular interest. In addition to the assessments, students are expected to participate in the we ekly discussions for each unit on the module’s MyAberdeen discussion board.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is an influential topic that relates to Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics and Human Computer Interaction. NLP engineers are in high demand at companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft that require sophisticated analysis of text on the internet. This course covers a range of theoretical and applied topics related to how computers interpret human language, and also how computers can generate human language; for example, to summarise data. Topics include grammar formalisms and algorithms for parsing sentences, natural language semantics, text analytics using sentiment analysis, machine translation, grammar checking and natural language generation from data.

This course will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn to design and query databases. The course aims to teach the material using case studies from real-world applications. You will develop a critical understanding of the principal theories, principles and concepts, such as modelling techniques used in the design, administration and security of database systems. You will also learn core theoretical concepts such as relational algebra, file organisation and indexing. At the end of this course you will be able to design and build Web and cloud-based databases and have a critical understanding of how database-driven applications operate.

This course will be of interest to anyone who wishes to learn about the processes associated with modern systems analysis and design. In the course you will develop a critical understanding of how to analyse and evaluate systems, and to design and specify corresponding functionalities in a succinct and official way. The course will introduce you to the tools and techniques used by business and system analysts/designers and cover the fundamental issues associated with software engineering and project management.

This module is designed to stimulate the acquisition of skill in software project management. Students will be put into small teams and will have to act as the project management team for the assigned project. There will be no requirement to produce any software as the emphasis is on project management strategies. Students will be required to short list the projects they would like to work on. The teams will have to take on the role of the project management team dealing with a series of activities that constitute the life cycle of the project.

The course is primarily about the bidirectional interaction between new electronic technologies and changes in our society, addressing questions such as: What impact do E-Technologies have on society? What are the human factors involved in engaging in the electronic society? What is the impact of the electronic society on organisations? An overview of sectors: E-Commerce, E-Health, E-Learning, E-Governance, etc., and issues: Legal & ethical, security, privacy, intellectual property, software failure, digital divide. The course will study how societies and organisations must change to best utilise emerging technologies, and problems that arise.

The Project in Information Technology is a  group project where you will  work with a number of fellow students to build an application for an external client.  In order to do this successfully you will follow practices that produce successful projects, which will be introduced to you during the first week of the project, and continued during the rest of the summer.

Past teams have worked with Survival International, Grampian Fire and Rescue, the Small Isles, local volunteer groups, and an Edinburgh film company.

Students join two different teams and develop one major, and one minor, piece of software over the term. The students learn the discover, design, develop, deliver process using agile and lean development process along with a service design approach to develop their product. This builds upon work previously done in other modules, which is pulled together in a new manner. This is the main course this term.

Students either join two different teams, or continue with ones from the previous term, and develop one major, and one minor, piece of software over the term. The students push the discover, design, develop, deliver process further to explore deeper issues in customer development and continuous improvement of their business offering. This is the main course this term.

Within this module students deepen their understandings of the business startups through a mixture of self-directed study and guided discussion with guest speakers. The class under the guidance of the course organizer determines the classroom topics of discussion. Suggestions topics could be finance, staffing, burnout and motivation as well as customer development, risk and legal issues.

Students study service design and how co-creation of their product with customers will develop a better experience and service for their users. This is a practical based approach with regular workshops to learn the practices involved and how they can be used with their business idea.

This is a general introductory course for the Oil and Gas Computing programme and will provide studentswith an overview of the Oil and Gas industry as well as setting the context of Computing therein.

This course will introduce the theory and practice of data management and security as applied in the upstream oil and gas industry. The course will build on the experience of students with a degree in Computing Science and will include topics such as: Data and physical security, big data, cloud computing, system integration, legacy management, data visualisation. With use cases from upstream oil and gas contexts.

This course will introduce the theory and practice of autonomous intelligent systems as applied in the upstream oil and gas industry. The course will build on the experience of students with a degree in Computing Science and will include topics such as:Knowledge representation and reasoning, Human Computer Interaction, Data mining, Knowledge management, Sensor networks, Agent-based Computing, Modelling.

This course looks at why a computer system that interacts with human beings needs to be usable. It covers a set of techniques that allow usability to be taken into account when a system is designed and implemented, and also a set of techniques to assess whether usability has been achieved. Weekly practical sessions allow students to practice these techniques. The assessed coursework (which is normally carried out by groups of students) gives an opportunity to go through the design process for a concrete computer system, with a particular focus on ensuring usability.

This course will be of interest to anyone who wishes to develop a Web presence. It will cover several of the fundamental technologies associated with the Web and will give you the opportunity to build an interactive Website with the knowledge gleaned. In addition to developing critical knowledge of the theories, principles and concepts associated with good Web design and Website management and accessibility, you will enhance your understanding of core technologies including XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM and PHP.

This course provides insight into the business reasons for large software systems such as loyalty card systems, backend systems integrating firms and their suppliers and larges systems that integrate payroll, finance and operational parts of a business. You also learn the entrepreneurial aspects of business during the practical sessions where you explore and develop your own business application idea using service design and lean startup approaches centred around customer development, which you will find useful in any future work.

The module delivers practical experience in the technical issues involved in creating an effective showcasing proof of concept for a real product in the wider software sector. It is a follow-up of the CS5567 module, where students have devised a business plan for a company centred around such product. Students work in teams alreadyset up during CS5567, implementing the requirements specifications for the product devised in that module. On the final day of the module, an Industrial Assessment Group listens to the technical presentation of the showcasing proof of concept developed as part of this module and provides feedback.

This module gives students a unique opportunity to develop entrepreneurial skills, which are required to help in the development of a business-oriented mindset. Even students who have no ambitions to set up a new business, there is a great deal that they can learn about entrepreneurial tools and techniques which would benefit their future career in different employment capacities. From the very beginning, students are asked to identify a novel software-based niche product/service (i.e., a still-to-be-devised, currently non-existing but potentially appealing product/service idea) and to find out how to set up a company which would develop and commercialise such product.

The course covers methods and techniques currently adopted in the software sector to devise and analyse software project plans and to control them. Industry standard software tools will be explored throughout the course. This deepens the comparative study of traditional and agile approaches to issues in software development in order to better understand which approaches work better in which situations.

This module provides an overview of software quality assurance activities at all stages of software development. It covers not only software testing, but the broader topic of quality assurance and control, including early quality assurance activities such as contract review, and the infrastructure components that support quality assurance activities. The course looks at well-established techniques, often rooted in the waterfall mindset, and consider how these fit in an iterative development methodology. Students are expected to undertake further reading when indicated by the course tutor, and to participate in the weekly discussions for each unit on the module’s MyAberdeen discussion board.

This module, which spans two terms, delivers the individual dissertation (the “thesis”) that each student must submit at the end of the MSc course. It focuses on an individual topic of software project management relevance agreed between the programme director and each student during the preparatory part of the module itself, before a project supervisor is assigned to the student. The research leading to the dissertation, which can include a broad range of SWPM-relevant topics, focuses on specific projects the student is currently working on (or has worked on, or expects to be working on).

This module focuses on software project management at portfolio level, where suites of projects are managed in accordance with the broader strategy of an organisation. The module guides students to appreciate the need for and the benefits of a software project portfolio management system. It introduces both the principles that must be adopted fo a portfolio management system to operate successfully and the processes involved in defining a portfolio of software projects. The module also focuses on the activities required in order to ensure that the intended results of the portfolio management are delivered.

This course will be of interest to anyone who wishes to develop a Web presence. It will cover several of the fundamental technologies associated with the Web and will give you the opportunity to build an interactive Website with the knowledge gleaned. In addition to developing critical knowledge of the theories, principles and concepts associated with good Web design and Website management and accessibility, you will enhance your understanding of core technologies including XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM and PHP.

This course serves as a lead in to the individual summer project. In it you will analyse the domain of your chosen research topic and provide a report on the background or literature.

This module provides an introduction to a number of legal issues relevant to software development and exploitation. It aims to increase students' awareness of commercial and legal issues relevant to their own work in the context of the wider software industry sector.The module thus focuses on legal topics relevant to those establishing their own business, including types of business and the fundamentals of contract law, also covering legal issues specific to software, such as the application of intellectual property law to software products. Students are expected to participate in the weekly discussions on the module’s MyAberdeen discussion board.

This course looks at why a computer system that interacts with human beings needs to be usable. It covers a set of techniques that allow usability to be taken into account when a system is designed and implemented, and also a set of techniques to assess whether usability has been achieved. Weekly practical sessions allow students to practice these techniques. The assessed coursework (which is normally carried out by groups of students) gives an opportunity to go through the design process for a concrete computer system, with a particular focus on ensuring usability.

This course provides insight into the business reasons for large software systems such as loyalty card systems, backend systems integrating firms and their suppliers and larges systems that integrate payroll, finance and operational parts of a business. You also learn the entrepreneurial aspects of business during the practical sessions where you explore and develop your own business application idea using service design and lean startup approaches centred around customer development, which you will find useful in any future work.

Students join two different teams and develop one major, and one minor, piece of software over the term. The students learn the discover, design, develop, deliver process using agile and lean development process along with a service design approach to develop their product. This builds upon work previously done in other modules, which is pulled together in a new manner. This is the main course this term.

Students either join two different teams, or continue with ones from the previous term, and develop one major, and one minor, piece of software over the term. The students push the discover, design, develop, deliver process further to explore deeper issues in customer development and continuous improvement of their business offering. This is the main course this term.

Each student will develop a suitable personal development plan with the course organiser so that individualised assessments can be co-created. This will enable students to guide their learning on the degree so that they achieve their desired goals, as everyone will be on the programme for different reasons. This course will help students achieve their programme goals.

This course aims to give the student experience in applying Computing technology to the exploration for oil and gas. Students will be presented with a number of specified case studies from the exploration domain of the upstream oil and gas sector. They will work with an academic and industrial contact, and will identify potential solutions to the case study problems.

This course aims to give the student experience in applying Computing technology to the production of oil and gas products. Students will be presented with a number of specified case studies from the production domain of the upstream oil and gas sector. They will work with an academic and industrial contact, and will identify potential solutions to the case study problems.

The Project in Information Technology is a  group project where you will  work with a number of fellow students to build an application for an external client.  In order to do this successfully you will follow practices that produce successful projects, which will be introduced to you during the first week of the project, and continued during the rest of the summer.

Past teams have worked with Survival International, Grampian Fire and Rescue, the Small Isles, local volunteer groups, and an Edinburgh film company.

The purpose of this course is to develop the students' creative, analytical, practical and presentational skills and to allow the students to consolidate material learnt earlier in the programme, to extend their skills, and to research new areas.

This module, which spans two terms, delivers the individual dissertation (the “thesis”) that each student must submit at the end of the MSc course. It focuses on an individual topic of software project management relevance agreed between the programme director and each student during the preparatory part of the module itself, before a project supervisor is assigned to the student. The research leading to the dissertation, which can include a broad range of SWPM-relevant topics, focuses on specific projects the student is currently working on (or has worked on, or expects to be working on).

This course aims to develop the students' creative, analytical, practical and presentational skills applied to upstream Oil and Gas Computing. To allow the students to consolidate material learnt earlier in the programme, to extend their skills, and to research new areas. Students undertake an individual project relevant to the programme.