Systems Engineering for the Internet of Things MSc: in conversation with our Programme Director

Sri, can you tell us what makes the Systems Engineering for the Internet of Things (IoT) MSc relevant in the world today?

The idea of the Master’s is to bring together the technical and the entrepreneurial sides of the sensors and the Internet of Things. Ultimately, we want to teach students how to deploy IoT nodes in a meaningful way that meets users’ needs in the real world.

The programme is attractive to students who have had some exposure to computer science or engineering, but they want experience of deploying IoT in the real world.

Hardware is now extremely cheap, so it’s easy to design and deploy it. But an important part of this process is being able to engage with different stakeholders and understand their perspectives.

Policymakers, environmentalists, campaigners, privacy controllers – and many, many more stakeholders – all have a viewpoint on sensor systems.

This programme not only provides strong technical foundations on hardware, software, and robotics but also goes beyond, to ensure these components are cleverly connected – as it also looks at how people themselves will react to the presence of sensor systems.

We then tie these all together through a module on entrepreneurship so students also learn how to develop a business model for it.

What technical content do students learn through the programme?

We deliver a module on real-world deployments and multi-agent systems, and another one on designing embedded systems.

These are the technical ‘bread and butter’ computer science modules, and they give students an excellent grounding in IoT systems.

Running alongside these modules is a project module about designing sensor systems.

The idea is that students apply what they learn, in terms of technical skills, by using system thinking and speculative design to deploy their IoT solutions in the real world. Hands-on work is key throughout the programme.

Tell us more about the systems thinking and speculative design aspect of the MSc.

The Systems Thinking module teaches students how to speculate possible, probable, preferable and plausible futures.

We’re essentially asking them to project themselves into the future and think about what that future world and users’ experiences would look like with the technology they’re building.

Not only this, but we train them to consider how that future world might be appreciated by everyone. Everything we cover in this module feeds into the hands-on work students are doing.

By considering their IoT systems from all angles and from different stakeholder perspectives, they will appreciate they have challenges to overcome to improve their systems.

The holistic approach to developing IoT systems creates better solutions, which translate into more tangible and exploitable business ideas too.

About Professor Sriram Subramanian

Sriram Subramanian is Professor of Computer Science at the UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC) and Multi-Sensory Devices research group. He joined the department in 2020, having previously worked at the University of Sussex. 

He currently holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies on novel interactive systems.

In 2021, he was recognised as an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Distinguished Member for his outstanding scientific contributions to computing. 

What are the highlights of this Master’s degree?

At the end of the second term, we organise a showcase event for students to demonstrate the sensor systems they have designed.

We’ll invite a whole range of people – industry leaders, the public, students from schools and venture capitalists. Not only does this bring the potential to pitch for funding if that’s what students want to do; it also teaches them how to communicate their research clearly to different stakeholders.

A 30 second pitch to a school child is very different from a pitch to a venture capitalist – and an event like this is excellent training for students to refine the way they talk about their project.

How do students decide what projects they work on through the Master’s?

We have an Industrial Advisory Board who advise our Master’s students in their choice of both individual and group projects.

The key is that we have a lot of industry partners and links that our students can take advantage of.

Our industry advisers will actively participate in the annual showcase event, and we’re also collaborating with UCLB, the commercialisation company of UCL, to gain even more industry participants.

At UCL Computer Science, we also have the UCL Industry Exchange Network (UCL IXN), which investigates proposed projects for students. So far this has brought 180 collaborations. These are all crucial touchpoints for our students to find meaningful projects and to connect with industry.

What is the Multi-Sensory Devices group?

It’s a research group hosted by UCL Computer Science that is interested in creating new forms of interactive sensory experiences.

We all come from different facets of computer science, such as bridging computer science with social science, computer fabrication and electronics, graphics, robotics and multiagent systems.

We want to cover the whole stack, where we go all the way from creating a novel sensor to deployment and user evaluation. Usually research groups operate in one particular remit or stack, but we want to cover all of them to create multi-sensor user experiences.

Whatever we create, we want it to be deployable and meaningful in the real world, whether it is to help farming, or to support interaction in malls.

The Multi-Sensory Devices Group is important to our Master’s students as they can do research projects with us, and benefit from our latest cross-disciplinary work through the modules we teach.

Two of the academics involved in the group have successfully launched start-up businesses too, so students benefit from actual entrepreneurial experience if they are interested in the start-up world.

Systems Engineering for IoT MSc is based at the UCL East campus. What are the benefits to students of being in this environment?

The UCL East campus has been purpose-built from the ground up with programmes such as this Master’s in mind.

We have a few sensor networks deployed inside the building, so students doing the programme can gain access to these sensors and the infrastructure surrounding them.

The campus is located on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which has sensors deployed in it too, so students can access some excellent learning opportunities.

At UCL East, we’re situated alongside other related Master’s programmes in ecological sciences and the built environment, so we all have opportunities to interact together. For example, the sensors used in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to monitor bats, birds and other animals are of interest to Master’s students across many disciplines.

What kind of jobs can graduates of this programme go on to do?

We really want to encourage students to be entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs – where they are part of a company helping them with developing a new project in the area of sensor systems.

For fresh graduates entering this programme, it gives them the opportunity to do something entrepreneurial in a structured way.

Individuals who have worked in industry for a few years can equally gain new perspectives from this Master’s, that they can take back into their companies with them.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a big buzzword in the industry right now.

Companies from Cisco to Qualcomm, and Amazon to Facebook/Meta, are exploiting products in the IoT space, and our graduates can easily find employment in these sorts of companies. But there are opportunities in other companies you wouldn’t necessarily think about, who are also engaging in the IoT space.

Companies such as Adidas or Nike, who are creating some incredible IoT products. We know our graduates to be imaginative when it comes to exploring possible opportunities in a wide range of companies.

Want to know more? 

Visit the Systems Engineering for the Internet of Things MSc prospectus page to find out more about the programme. 

This article was originally published in 2023, prior to the first cohort of students joining Systems Engineering for the Internet of Things MSc.