CDP is a reach-out project of the School of Computer Science, where we work on real commercial software for real clients. With the support of academic and specialist staff, our software development teams provide commercial software development services to customers with bespoke software development needs.

This excellent opportunity gives you critical experience of working professionally with clients across the entire software project lifecycle from customer brief through to specifying, designing, developing and testing software using industry-standard technologies and techniques. Employers tell us they are actively looking for candidates with experience applying the project management methodologies, frameworks and tools that you will explore, use and hone during your time in CDP.

Graduates tell us that their experiences are highly sought after in industry, and you will certainly end up with lots to put on your CV and talk about in job interviews!

Your MSc Dissertation is your chance to spend a full third of your study time working on a topic of interest to you, and producing something major as a result. You can design your own project, working with a member of staff to develop an idea. Perhaps you will develop an AI program, do some research in virtual reality, or build a new robot butler – the choice is yours.

With regular support from a supervisor, you’ll learn to create, undertake, evaluate and report on a significant individual project which you’ll be proud to show off to an employer or perhaps provide a stepping stone into further research.

Complex new technological systems including robotic and autonomous systems are employed in tasks that have high dependability requirements, i.e. require the system to be safe and perform its tasks uninterrupted by failures. Dependability, therefore, is a property that must be designed well. These systems are typically reactive, i.e. they respond to changes in the environment, and use concurrency and parallelism to achieve their tasks.

The module focuses on these specific aspects of dependable, reactive, and real-time design, and introduces students to the appropriate concepts and design methods. It focuses on design of single systems and goes further to discuss specific challenges encountered today in the design of cooperative and multi-robot systems, i.e. system teams and swarms that use collaborative and social intelligence to carry out tasks beyond the competency of a single system.

This module explores how to design and deploy intelligent Edge AI systems under real-world constraints, including latency, reliability and limited resources . You will apply Artificial Intelligence techniques to build efficient, real-time decision-making systems across domains such as robotics, smart devices and autonomous applications, while considering safety, robustness and responsible deployment

This module explores cutting-edge developments in Responsible, Safe and Explainable AI, focusing on how modern AI systems are designed, deployed, and governed at scale. You will study federated learning, collective intelligence, and the principles of responsible AI, including explainability, fairness, privacy, and safety. Through research-led teaching and real-world case studies, you will develop the skills to critically evaluate advanced AI systems and understand their impact in high-stakes and regulated environments.

This module enables review of cutting-edge and emerging concepts and methods across the spectrum of computer science. We will meet as a reading group to select, review and discuss academic publications of high quality, that take topics beyond the curriculum and into the current state of the art; students will learn how to read and review academic materials critically.