The successful completion of large software systems requires strong technical skills, good design and competent management. Unfortunately, unlike hardware, software systems have proven to be notoriously difficult to build on-time, in-budget, and reliable, despite the best efforts of many very smart people over the last 50 years. This is an upper-division program intended to help students gain the technical knowledge required to understand, analyze, modify and build complex software systems.

We will concentrate on learning the organization and complexity of large software systems that we do understand, and gaining practical experience in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the art, science, collaboration and multi-disciplinary skills required to develop computing solutions in real-world application domains. The technical topics will be selected from data structures, algorithm analysis, operating systems, networks, information security, object oriented design and analysis, verification techniques, scientific visualization and modeling. The program seminar will focus on various technical topics in the software industry. Students will have an opportunity to engage in a substantial computing project through all the development phases of proposal, requirements, specification, design and implementation.

This program is for advanced computer science students who satisfy the prerequisites. We also expect students to have the discipline, intellectual maturity and self motivation to identify their project topics, organize project teams and resources and complete advanced work independently.