Computer systems now pervade almost every aspect of our world. Computers are hidden within a vast number of electro-mechanical environments, and this ubiquity is only expected to increase. This specialisation is particularly known to affect the fields of robotics, autonomous vehicles, medical devices, industrial automation systems and smart technologies. Their practitioners are diverse, with understanding in areas that range from bioengineering to software development.

This specialisation is offered by our Department of Electrical, Computer, and Software Engineering, who encourages industry partnerships at all study levels, so students and graduates benefit from contributing to a wide range of global industries. The department is also strongly connected to world-class experts and facilities, including the Centre for Automation and Robotic Engineering Science and the Embedded Systems Research Group.

Computer systems engineers solve problems by creating systems that possess a computer embedded within a large operation. With knowledge in hardware and software, they ensure that these products can make decisions and function in the real world. Graduates are therefore equipped with practical skills that do not conform to current technological trends, but future-proofed knowledge that will ensure that they can be at the forefront of change in industry.

Pursuing a PhD at our University gives you access to a high-calibre research community – you may have the opportunity to publish papers, attend international conferences and develop your network in academia and industry.

We welcome research proposals in topics relating to our key areas, including:

• Embedded systems, with emphasis on hardware/software design, real-time systems, low-power design, application-specific processors, system-level languages and compilers, ubiquitous and wearable computing, smart sensors, medical devices, intelligent transportation systems, the Internet of Things, and hardware acceleration of artificial neural networks
• Robotics, focusing on areas such as human-robot interaction, software systems and tools, and applications in essential sectors such as healthcare and agriculture
• Digital health: modelling biological cells, pacemaker testing, and emulating human organs on Field Programmable Gate Arrays
• Ultra high speed computations: advanced techniques for processing high bandwidth datastreams and big data
• Software methodologies: Agile and Lean techniques, data-mining, cloud computing, and scalable machine learning
• Applied Deep Learning, focusing on impaired speech processing and recognition systems, and intelligent health diagnostic and screening systems