Engineering of Socio-Technical Systems

["General InformationThe English-language Master's degree programme in Engineering of Socio-Technical Systems (EngSTS) is a specialised academic curriculum. To be admitted to this programme, students must have completed a Bachelor’s degree in Computing Science or Psychology (with a technical specialisation) or in another subject that is closely linked to the Master’s programme. The courses take an interdisciplinary approach to the development of safety-critical, computer-based interactive systems, and particularly focus on the interaction between humans and technology. They combine content from neuroscience with methods used by engineers to develop information systems. This Master’s degree programme offers students a unique opportunity to follow an intricate mix of Computing Science and Psychology courses, especially cognitive and perception psychology. EngSTS provides the following three focus areas:Human Computer Interaction (HCI):This track equips students with the necessary theoretical knowledge and practical skills to design, implement and evaluate future interactive systems in the context of the design of complex technical systems. It combines basic knowledge of usability with knowledge from psychology to conceptualise and design interactions between humans and technology.Embedded Brain-Computer Interaction (EmbeddedBCI):This track provides students with the necessary theoretical knowledge and practical skills to design and evaluate complex technical systems with both human and technical players as well as to use brain-computer interfaces in cyber-physical systems. This course covers the principles of system design, neurocognitive psychology and signal processing as well as a wide range of accentuation domains, which emphasises the extent to which the knowledge and skills learnt during this course can be transferred to and applied in different areas.Systems Engineering (SE):This track equips students with the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge to analyse, design and develop large cooperative networks of safety-critical, socio-technical systems, i.e., large systems whose limits are not bound by other systems. At the end of this course, students will be able to recognise, analyse and describe the relationships between individual subsystems in the context of an integrated system as well as the interactions between subsystem properties and integrated system properties.Careers and Areas of EmploymentGraduates of this Master’s degree programme often go on to work as usability or safety engineers, human factors professionals, interaction developers, or developers of user interfaces and cooperation strategies for future interactive and cooperative information and cyber-physical systems. Successful students will find job opportunities in many different industry areas in which interactive, cooperative and cyber-physical systems (CPS) are developed – from mobile application development to partially autonomous technical systems, and from web services, automotive and aerospace systems to the development of medical devices."]