NEW! The LSCITS EngD Website is now live at www.lscits.org/engd
The content on this webpage is also available in four pdf-format LSCITS publicity flyers:
1. Training Programme Overview
2. Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Core Taught Modules
3. Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Options and Pathways
4. Engineering Doctorate (EngD) September 2008 Entry Details
Note: Final formal approval for the LSCITS EngD was granted by the University of York at the end of 2007, and EPSRC funding was approved in Feb 2008. First intake to the EngD is planned for April 2009. If you wish to apply, you will need these forms:
(A) The EngD application form (as .doc or as .pdf).
(B) The equal opportunities monitoring form (as .doc or as .pdf).
(C) The instructions for referees (as .doc or as .pdf).
The LSCITS Training Programme is centered on the delivery of an innovative, custom-designed, world-class Engineering Doctorate (EngD). The EngD is a full doctoral-level qualification that is much more industrially focused than the traditional academic PhD. The first phase of the LSCITS EngD will launch in April 2009, and is intended to graduate at least 40 students over the period 2012-2015. The degree will be centered at the University of York, with teaching and supervision from senior faculty at the Universities of Bristol, Leeds, Oxford, St Andrews, and York. The UK’s Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has reserved funds of £4.1m to support this EngD. Additional support of £5.3m, in cash or in kind, will come from industrial sponsors. Inquiries from new sponsors are always welcome.
While a traditional PhD education is an excellent grounding for someone intent on pursing a career as an academic researcher based in a university, it has been recognised for some time that an equivalent qualification with a different emphasis would better serve the requirements of business, industry, and other non-academic organisations where the need for enterprising and commercially successful research and innovation plays a key role. The UK’s Engineering Doctorate (EngD) programme was set up more than a decade ago to meet this need. Various British universities now house a total of over 20 EngD centres. Each centre is focused on a particular problem-domain or theme, and several involve partnerships between multiple collaborating universities and industrial partners.
EngD students, known as Research Engineers (REs), are required to pass a number of taught courses (similar in style and content to those found on master of science, or master of business administration, degree courses), and then to pursue independent research leading to the submission of a doctoral thesis. The thesis should be single coherent document, but may be based on a portfolio of related research studies.
All Research Engineers (REs) studying for an EngD are expected to work closely with a sponsoring institution. For many REs, the sponsoring institution will be their employer, who releases the RE to attend the EngD’s taught courses and who helps specify the scope of (and topics explored in) the RE’s independent research activities. For other REs, the sponsoring institution is likely to have suggested a desired research topic or theme, provided some funds to support the RE, and agreed to hosting the student for extended periods of time. Many such REs will receive their primary funding (stipend and fees) from EPSRC studentships. Typical sponsoring institutions could be: a private-sector company at any stage of maturity from start-up to global multinational; or a public-sector entity such as a government agency, a state-funded healthcare provider, or a division of the armed forces or emergency services. For ease of reference, any such sponsoring institution is referred to here as an “industrial sponsor”.
In an extensive independent survey conducted for EPSRC by Strategic Marketing Associates (SMA’s “Review of the Engineering Doctorate Scheme: Stakeholder Survey”, March 2006: available from the EPSRC), previous industrial sponsors listed various reasons for getting involved in an EngD. These included: a means for directly connecting with and becoming involved in university research; a cost-effective method of getting research done (of particular value to SMEs); the attraction of working with the RE as a commercially-oriented recruit; the opportunity to “grow your own” researchers in light of recruitment difficulties; and the attractive prospect of treating the interaction between the sponsor and the RE as a form of four-year job interview. The same report states that, for industrial sponsors, a major distinction of the EngD in comparison to a PhD is the advantage that the RE will be based for much of the time at the company and hence will be available to work on a project on a full-time basis. Nevertheless, given the four-year time-scale for an EngD, it is seen as best suited to a project that addresses an underlying problem (e.g. strategic or pre-competitive research) rather than a current immediate tactical need.
All EngD programmes are explicitly intended to equip their Research Engineers (REs) for senior roles in industry and commerce. (Nevertheless, an EngD would also be a valuable route into academic research.) They do this by providing high-quality collaborations between the universities and a range of companies, and immersing the REs in leading-edge research in a commercial context. In contrast to the traditional UK 3-year academic PhD, EngD courses last for four years, carry a higher annual stipend, and require that 70% or more of the RE's time is spent on a project for the sponsoring organisation, with at least 25% of that time spent on-site at the sponsor.
A March 2007 review of the UK’s EngD programmes found that, when compared to a standard PhD, in most cases the number of publications from EngD REs was higher, while both the completion rates and the academic standards of the final theses were directly comparable.
While most EngDs do accept REs with no prior industrial experience, historically over 50% of all REs have spent between 1 and 5 years in industry prior to enrolling, and 20% have more than 6 years industrial experience at enrolment. SMA’s March 2006 survey of the UK EngD Programme found that the strong industrial connection is one of the main reasons for choosing to do an EngD; it states: “one third of all REs had not considered doing a PhD but were attracted to the EngD because of the chance to work in a real industry environment.”
The LSCITS EngD offers its REs a unique opportunity to become members of a new generation of specialised engineers and scientists, who – by their interaction with, and active participation in, the LSCITS Research Programme – will become members of a wider national and international community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to meeting the challenges inherent in dealing with current and future large-scale complex IT systems and systems-of-systems.
Our primary aim is that graduates of the LSCITS EngD will have a good understanding of relevant issues and methods across all components of the LSCITS Stack (described in more detail here), and of how the different components of the Stack interrelate, interface, and integrate. The EngD REs, and also the LSCITS PhD students and postdoctoral researchers working directly on the Initiative’s Research Programme, will collectively aim to deliver intellectual tools (and software) that will allow us to improve our understanding of how to analyse and design, and deploy and manage, current and future LSCITS.
The LSCITS EngD requires REs to successfully complete a number of core taught modules, and also a sufficient number of optional taught modules. REs who accrue sufficient course credits from their taught modules may progress to pursue their individual research studies, leading to submission of their thesis.
The LSCITS EngD core modules are:
Faculty at the University of York have worked closely with other members of the LSCITS Consortium, and with various potential industrial sponsors, to design the LSCITS EngD. The EngD is an entirely new degree course, centred in York’s Department of Computer Science (rated ‘6*’ and ‘excellent’ in independent reviews of its research and teaching) but with significant additional involvement from the The York Management School and from the partner sites of the LSCITS consortium. The York LSCITS EngD Centre Director-Designate is Dr Gerald Luettgen, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. The LSCITS Initiative’s overall Training Director is Prof. John McDermid, Head of York’s Department of Computer Science.
For further details email: EngDInquiry@lscits.org
A paid undergraduate intern scheme will also operate as part of the LSCITS Initiative over 2008-2012. Undergraduate students will be able to join the LSCITS project teams for periods of two months or more, typically over the summer vacation.
For further details email: InternInquiry@lscits.org
The LSCITS Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Programme requires REs to successfully complete a number of core taught modules, designed and delivered by senior faculty from the LSCITS Consortium universities of Bristol, Leeds, Oxford, St Andrews and York. Although centred in the York Department of Computer Science, the EngD also involves modules designed and delivered by the The York Management School. Here we give summary details of each of the EngD core modules, and then briefly introduce the remaining components of the EngD.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the main funding agency for Computer Science in the UK, has reserved £4m to support the LSCITS EngD. In addition to covering set-up and running costs, the EPSRC funds are intended to provide for 30 fully-funded LSCITS EngD studentships over the four intake years 2008-2011.
This, the first module on the course, is an intensive one-week course intended to provide both a technical “flying start” and also some initial team-building among the REs. The module is intended to provide an overview of some of the key issues in developing and assuring large scale complex IT systems, especially covering requirements and architecture: the key elements of a Systems Engineering approach. It will also give a brief overview of other core modules, and it includes some orientation content to help familiarise the REs with the various academic facilities available at York. Sample texts include:
G. Kotonya & I. Sommerville (1998). Requirements Engineering Processes and Techniques. John Wiley.
J. McDermid (1992). Software Engineer’s Reference Book. Butterworth Heineman.
I. Sommerville (2007). Software Engineering (8th Edition). Addison-Wesley.
As IT systems increase in scale and complexity, so there is a growing need for graduates with strong understanding of empirical techniques for analyzing and visualizing their structure and dynamics. Understanding and managing LSCITS requires well-developed skills for generating, summarising, comparing, and making informed decisions from multivariate data that may not be well modelled by standard distributions. This module aims to provide students with a broad but firm grounding in methods drawn from the literature on experiment design, data analysis, and visualisation; and furthermore to integrate this with recent findings from studies of the interplay between network topology, growth-history, and dynamics. Sample texts include:
J. Antony (2003). Design of Experiments for Engineers and Scientists. Butterworth-Heinemann.
J. Miller & S. Page (2007). Complex Adaptive Systems. Princeton University Press.
D. Watts (1999). Small Worlds: the Dynamics of Networks Between Order & Randomness. Princeton University Press.
This module covers the main software systems modelling and verification techniques, and illustrates their usage with real-world examples studied and analysed with model-checking tools. The focus is on properties such as safety, dependability, resource usage, and performance. The content includes: reactive systems and their models; temporal logic; model checking and algorithms; modelling formalisms; verification of system properties; real-time model checking; probabilistic model checking; software verification; security and trust. Sample texts include:
B. Berard et al. (2001). Systems and Software Verification: Model Checking Techniques and Tools. Springer.
E. Clarke, O. Grumberg & D. Peled (2000). Model Checking. MIT Press.
M. Huth & M. Ryan (2004). Logic in Computer Science: Modelling and Reasoning About Systems. CUP.
This module provides an overview of the challenges in developing high-integrity software systems; and of current processes for accreditation of security-critical systems and for certification of safety-critical systems. It also provides an understanding of the growing diversity of high-integrity systems on which commerce, transport, healthcare, etc. increasingly depends. It introduces techniques for achieving and assuring high-integrity software, and the approaches to justifying their safety and security. On completion of this module, students will have a firm appreciation of the growing societal dependence on high-integrity systems, and they will understand the state of the art in developing high-integrity systems and the risk factors and approaches to managing key risks. Sample texts include:
J. Barnes (2003). High Integrity Software: The SPARK Approach to Safety and Security. Addison Wesley.
J. McDermid et al. (2004). The Challenges of Complex IT Projects. Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society. ISBN 1-903496-15-2.
E. Hollnagel, D. Woods, & N. Leveson, editors (2006). Resilience Engineering: Concepts and Precepts. Ashgate.
This module requires students to investigate and understand the relationship between LSCITS and organisations. Other EngD core modules start with technological complexity and work outwards toward production processes and governance. This module starts with organizations and shows how IT solutions are produced by complex organisational processes – and, in the case of start-ups, by broader social and economic processes. On completion of this module, students should be able to understand the social and organizational reasons why projects go well or badly; understand that it is essential to identify and study salient features of organizational processes; understand and be able to use social research methods to study the creation and use of LSICTS in an organization setting; and understand the issues and problems of setting up workplace fieldwork. Sample texts include:
A. Crabtree (2003). Designing Collaborative Systems: A practical guide to ethnography. Springer.
P. Dunleavy et al. (2006). Digital Era Governance. Oxford University Press.
D. Vaughan (1997). The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. University of Chicago Press.
The subtitle of this module is Strategy, Management, and Commercialisation. It aims to provide students with a firm grounding in the legal, managerial, and financial aspects of innovative technology research for knowledge transfer and wealth creation. This module is intended to provide a grounding in the current practices of industry and commerce, and current thinking and research in schools of business and management. It has been custom-designed for the LSCITS programme and the industry-focused careers expected of its EngD Research Engineers. Sample texts include:
H. Chesbrough (2003). Open Innovation. Harvard Business School Press.
C. Perrow (1999). Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. Princeton University Press.
S. Scotchmer (2006). Innovations and Incentives. MIT Press.
The taught component of the LSCITS EngD also requires Research Engineers to successfully complete a number of optional (elective) taught modules, and an individual project, usually within the first two years. In addition to the optional modules offered by York’s Computer Science Department, optional modules may be studied at York Management School, and/or at the LSCITS Consortium partner universities. LSCITS staff from all the Consortium partner sites are available as advisors for the student’s Individual Project. A wide range of optional modules are available, designed and delivered by faculty from the LSCITS Consortium universities of Bristol, Leeds, Oxford, St Andrews and York. Here we explain the taught credit requirements of the EngD, list the options available, and then give three illustrative pathways through the EngD programme.
Research Engineers (REs) pursuing the LSCITS Engineering Doctorate (EngD) programme are required to successfully complete the taught component of the programme, partly before and partly alongside the main doctoral research work. The taught component comprises modules worth 120 credits overall, consisting of the six compulsory core modules each worth ten credits, and then the student’s choice of optional modules worth another 60 credits in total. Each student is also required to complete a compulsory individual project worth 60 credits, which serves as the literature review and research plan for the student's doctoral research activity.
The optional modules are structured into two strands: (I): Foundations,Systems and Software Engineering; and (II): Management, Commercial and Business Issues. All LSCITS EngD students are required to take a minimum of 20 credits from Strand II. Further details of each module can be found in the Programme Specification for the LSCITS EngD, available upon request. All optional modules count for 10 credits, except those offered by The University of St Andrews, where all modules are worth 20 credits. The University of York offers LSCITS EngD modules both from its Department of Computer Science (CS) and also from The York Management School (MS).
Notes: certain modules listed here have prerequisite modules elsewhere in the lists; some pairs of modules are mutually exclusive choices; some modules may not be offered in a particular year if demand is inadequate; course regulations and module availability are subject to change.
Fictional accounts of three possible case-history “pathways” through the LSCITS EngD are given here, to illustrate likely scenarios for our EngD Research Engineers.
Jane has worked for BigCo, a large engineering company, for seven years. She joined BigCo straight after leaving college with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, and works on developing new IT services and solutions for various key aspects of BigCo’s business. Jane’s managers are keen to retain her as an employee, and appreciate her need for career development, so they pay for her to take part in the LSCITS EngD while keeping her on payroll as a BigCo employee. In the first three years of her time on the EngD, Jane spends a total of twelve weeks attending one-week taught modules: an average of one week every three months (the rest of the time, Jane remains at her BigCo office). After studying the core modules taught at York, Jane finds that she is most motivated by issues in software engineering, and so she completes her EngD tuition by choosing the Oxford Software Development Management and Process Quality and Improvement modules; the St Andrews Software Architecture double-module; and the York modules Systems Engineering 1 and Software Implementation.
Jane pursues all her doctoral research on-site at BigCo, developing valuable new tools and practices for BigCo. After her EngD studies are concluded, Jane remains with BigCo and increasingly finds herself in leadership roles within the company.
In a quite remarkable coincidence, Jane's brother John also successfully completed the LSCITS EngD, having previously worked for several years as a government employee. Like Jane, John stayed on salary throughout his EngD studies, and remained with his public-sector organisation after he graduated from the EngD.
Anil has greatly enjoyed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science. He is keen to study for a doctoral-level degree, but has little interest in pursuing an academic research career, and so would like an alternative to a traditional academic PhD programme. Anil’s ultimate aim is to work in a management position in a company where technology innovation plays an important role. Attracted by the industrial focus of the LSCITS EngD, Anil successfully applies for an EPSRC-funded LSCITS EngD studentship, working with an industrial sponsor called SME.com, a medium-sized software systems consultancy company. Anil is able to take all the core modules in his first year on the EngD, and he elects to concentrate in his second year on non-technical optional modules, taking four courses offered by York Management School: Strategic Management and Organisational Change; Operations and Project Management; Organisational Analysis; and Human Resource Management. He also takes the Oxford Software Development Management module and the Bristol Advanced Systems Engineering module.
For his doctoral research, he spends almost all of his time working alongside a team at SME.com, and interacting with SME’s clients. Anil’s doctoral research project explores the interplay between social network dynamics in multi-organisation project teams and the design and maintenance of LSCITS. Anil’s industrial collaborators at SME.com value his participation in their team, and when Anil graduates with an EngD after four years, they decide to offer him a position on their staff.
Siu-Ming studied Business Computing as an undergraduate and then moved straight into an MBA. For the last four years he has worked for a major management consultancy company, mainly on public-sector IT projects. For various reasons, he has decided that the time has come for a change of career path. He resigns from his old job to take up an EPSRC-funded studentship on the LSCITS EngD, and through his professional contacts he negotiates a new industrial sponsor: a major IT consultancy company involved in introducing advanced IT systems into public-funded provision of health and social care. After completing the six core modules, Siu-Ming selects the two Oxford modules Process Quality and Improvement and Management of Risk and Quality; the St Andrews module on Critical Systems Engineering, and the two York modules Safety-Critical Project Management and Software Testing for Safety Critical Systems.
His doctoral thesis is a portfolio of related papers addressing issues in the adoption, use, and extension of high-integrity software engineering methods in large-scale health and social care IT applications. Upon completion of his thesis Siu-Ming and two fellow LSCITS EngD students establish a start-up company, offering specialised technology development and consultancy in safety-critical public-sector IT systems.
For further details e-mail: EngDInquiry@lscits.org