Welcome to ECS

Engineering and Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington is a leading research department in New Zealand. We back up our research with access to sophisticated, cutting-edge equipment including the ability to run simulations on the University of Canterbury Blue Gene supercomputer, and our own extensive grid computing initiative. We are a member of KAREN, facilitating high-speed network access throughout New Zealand and connectivity to Internet2 in the United States.

Postgraduate Programmes

ECS offers a full range of Graduate degrees, including PhD, ME (beginning in February 2010), MSc, and BSc Honours. It offers the PhD in Software, Network, Computer System, and Electronic Engineering, and in Computer Science. The ME programme offered at ECS enables students to undertake a research project in electronics, computer systems networking, software engineering or a combination of these. ECS offers the MSc and BSc Honours in Computer Science, and in Electronic and Computer System Engineering, It also offers a Masters by coursework in Computer Science, and several Graduate Diplomas.

A list of all postgraduate courses can be found on our course pages or in the Graduate Prospectus. The prospectus contains information about the School of Engineering and Computer Science and the available courses, including advice on how to apply.

Victoria University keeps copies of the academic prospectuses that you can download to your computer. You can find them at the Victoria Postgraduate Prospectus page. The 2010 Graduate Prospectus is now available.

An information session was held in October 2009, aimed at 3rd year students interested in going on to 4th year.

Research Areas

You can view some of the major areas of ECS's current research at the Research Groups.

People

Individual research interests and biographies of the ECS staff can be found on the People page. The Graduate Coursework Coordinator is Marcus Frean. The International Student Advisor is Pavle Mogin, who is in charge of admission of international graduate coursework students. The Postgraduate Research Thesis Coordinator is Mengjie Zhang (for PhD and MSc and ME thesis students).

Seminars

Throughout the year, various luminaries from academia and industry are invited to present at ECS, providing opportunities to expand your personal horizons, gain new insight into your own research, and a chance to network with others in your field. You can see previous and upcoming seminars in the ECS Seminars System.

Applying for Graduate Programmes

The University has information on how to apply for postgraduate programmes for Domestic Students and for International Students. Prospective MSc and ME thesis students should first make contact with an appropriate staff member to determine whether the topic they would like to explore for their thesis could be supervised by the school. Note that candidates for a thesis may enrol at any time, but candidates for Postgraduate programmes involving course work need to apply by the regular enrolment deadlines.

The University also has information about scholarships for Domestic Students and International Students. Note that the deadlines for scholarship applications vary considerably, and are not the same as enrolment deadlines.

PhD Students: From 2010, The Faculty of Graduate Research (FGR) provides the first port of call for all students interested in taking a PhD at the University. The Faculty website www.victoria.ac.nz/fgr provides application forms, details of available funding, application dates, and answers to a host of questions. The FGR continues to provide support to PhD students throughout their studies at the University. For PhD students, the admission applications and Scholarship applications will use a single form, and there are three application deadlines per year: 1 March, 1 July and 1 November. The application method can be seen from the FGR web site. Prospective PhD students are encouraged to make contact with an appropriate staff member to discuss possible research topics and/or proposals before the admission/scholarship application is submitted, but this is not a requirement any more. Note also that International PhD students only pay domestic fees.

Graduate Diplomas

As well as traditional Masters and PhD courses, we also offer Graduate Diplomas for professionals with a degree in another area looking to add a formal qualification.

Graduate Diploma in Science

The Graduate Diploma in Science is a one year programme (typically taken part time over at least two years) for students who have already obtained a first degree. The school offers several of the specialisations for the GDipSci: Computer Science, Electronics, and Logic and Computation. Candidates will need to have already taken at least the 100 level courses relevant to their specialisation.

Prospective students who have not already taken COMP 102 and COMP 103 (or equivalents at other universities) should attempt the Entry to COMP 200 Self Test, obtainable from the School office or http://ecs.victoria.ac.nz/Main/EntryToComp200SelfTest, to determine whether they have sufficient background in computer science to enter directly into the 200-level computer science courses.