Master of Science in Software and Data Engineering (MSDE) USI Università della Svizzera italiana

Software plays a pivotal role in almost all aspects of our life, including transportation, communication, economy, and healthcare.

We put trust in software to accomplish complex and vital tasks for us, such as managing our finances, sharing our family and friends’ memories, diagnosing diseases, flying airplanes, or driving cars. The complexity of these tasks, while becoming transparent to us, does not go away: It is distilled into the software our civilization depends on. Indeed, we are already in the era of ultra-large-scale software systems, composed of millions of code components interacting among them. In such a scenario, the software cannot be understood without its data and data becomes valuable only thanks to the software analyzing it. In other words, software engineering aims at managing the complexity of software, keeping it under control. Data engineering focuses instead on how to collect, store, and process huge amounts of data, that can be analyzed to gather insights and support decision-making activities. The master features courses taught by the world’s leading researchers of the Software Institute at the USI Faculty of Informatics.

Awarded Degree

With the successful completion of the program, students will be awarded a Master of Science in Software and Data Engineering.

Curriculum

The study programme is compounded of four modules: Software Engineering, Data Engineering, Electives, and Master thesis.

The Software Engineering module embraces 36 ECTS and provides students with a deep knowledge of state-of-the-art techniques. Topics related to this module are software design, software quality and testing, software architecture, software performance, and software analytics.

The Data Engineering module includes three courses (18 ECTS) teaching students techniques and tools to design and model data (1st semester), to convert data into information (2nd semester), and to transform information into knowledge useful to support decision making activities (3rd semester). The topics studied in the Software and the Data Engineering modules are continuously integrated through the whole course of study. This is done by devoting 18 ECTS to deal with both Software and Data Engineering with project based learning.

The Electives module includes 12 ECTS, that the student can freely select from a given list of courses offered at the USI Faculty of Informatics based on his/her personal preference. Finally, the remaining 36 ECTS are dedicated to the MSc thesis.

Students will use the 6 ECTS of the 3rd semester to visit the research groups of the Software Institute of the Faculty of Informatics and to prepare a thesis proposal. Then, they will work full time on the thesis in the 4th semester in the research group of their choice.

INTERNATIONAL RANKINGS

USI in the Times Higher Education (THE) and Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS), which are amongst the world's most popular and well-known global rankings - latest available data:

• QS World University Rankings 2023
  240th globally
  (out of 1500 universities considered)
  
• THE World University Rankings 2023
  Range 201-250
  (out of 1799 universities considered)
  
• THE World's Best Small Universities 2022
  15th worldwide
  among small universities.
  
• THE Young University Rankings 2022
  57th worldwide
  among ‘young’ universities (less than 50 years old)
  
• QS Top 50 Under 50 2021
  26th worldwide
  among ‘young’ universities (less than 50 years old)

U-MULTIRANK 2022

With 16 "A" in the indicators taken into consideration, USI ranks 3rd in the ranking of Swiss universities (Country Report Switzerland).

RANKINGS BY SUBJECT AREA

In addition to the global university rankings, USI has made significant progress in subject area rankings:

• THE Subject Rankings
  with important results in particular in Computer Science, Clinical and Health, Economics.
• Forschungsmonitoring
  with high scores in the rankings that measure the impact of research in Economics, especially when referring to the most prestigious academic journals of the field.

Career Prospects

Software lives in a world of data. Data is the new oil. Data is the new natural resource to be mined and exploited using software.

Data analytics software provides actionable insights at the basis of continuous improvement and decision making processes. Such insights can be found by exploring large quantities of data, by asking the right questions and knowing how to reliably and efficiently find the appropriate answers.

Students graduating in this Master will be highly specialized software and data engineers, able to fully understand and manage the complexity of modern software systems and of the sea of data surrounding them. Such a unique profile balancing both software and data engineering skills is significantly different from other Master Programs in Data Science that are appearing elsewhere in Switzerland and throughout Europe.

Mastering how to effectively use software to deal with the data deluge is a key capability for any organization undergoing digital transformation efforts Also, the demand for software and data engineers is currently very high and it is expected to grow even more in the near future.

Besides the expected high employability in industry, graduates will also represent the perfect candidate for pursuing a PhD degree at USI in one of the research groups of the Software Institute.

Employability Data

• Employed 100%
• Average Time to Job 2.2 months
  (56% within 3 months: 39% before graduation)