Structure and contents

Please be aware that slight changes in the study programme may occur. 

The Faculty of Informatics encourages and promotes the talent of its Bachelor and Master students by offering them summer internships in academic research within the programme Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program - UROP.

Internships are extracurricular, and access is on a competitive basis. Students work one-on-one with an advisor to develop a deeper understanding of both the concepts taught during the semester and the research topic. Students considering continuing in academia should seriously consider applying for a UROP position.

All research opportunities for this year are listed here.

See all the job and internship opportunities in the USI Job Bank.

The Master in Software and Data Engineering features courses taught by internationally renowned professors, being leading researchers at the USI Software Institute.

The teaching philosophy implemented throughout the Master aims at preparing and facilitating the student’s process of self-learning and self-acquisition of valuable knowledge and skills. Students master core design thinking processes, learning  how to analyze a problem, define different solution strategies, analyze trade-offs and take a suitable design decision taking into account relevant constraints. Students learn valuable lessons while facing real world datasets to be explored and prove themselves by building the software to do so.

All courses promote a mix of theory with practice, featuring a hands-on, learning-by-doing approach, with short-/long-term projects in which students apply what they study to concrete problems and datasets taken from the real world. Students are also expected to substantially improve their collaboration, presentation and communication skills, thanks to the public project presentations planned for most of the courses.

Academic Director: Cesare Pautasso
Co-Director: Matthias Hauswirth 

Admission to English-language Master’s programmes at USI requires a good command of English. Applicants whose previous degree was obtained in a language other than English are required to provide an internationally recognized language certificate at the B2+ level as defined by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), or an equivalent test result (e.g., TOEFL, IELTS, etc.).

The B2+ level on the CEFR corresponds to the following scores in internationally acknowledged exams:

Important:

• The language certificate must be included in the application package: candidates whose Bachelor's was entirely taught in English must upload an official document mentioning the tuition language (e.g., official transcript, diploma supplement, or any other official certificate issued by the university) in the application form.
• We only accept the above English qualifications (IELTS, TOEFL, Cambridge English, TOEIC).
• The certificate must still be valid at the point of the application. We generally cannot accept language test results older than three years as of September 1st.
• Certificates obtained by passing the IELTS Academic Online or TOEFL iBT Home Edition tests may also be submitted for admission to the programme.

Italian

As Lugano is located in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, students might be interested in acquiring the basics in Italian.
The Università della Svizzera italiana offers a free of charge Italian language course: further information can be found here.