Advanced Computing
Study a range of advanced computing concepts and technologies alongside experts in the field.
Study a range of advanced computing concepts and technologies alongside experts in the field
Build your awareness of emerging trends in computing and how these techniques can be adapted in industrial applications
Improve your programming and software development skills for a future career in computing
Course key facts
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Qualification
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MSc
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Duration
1 year
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Start date
September 2025
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Study mode
Full-time
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Fees
£23,400 Home
£43,800 Overseas
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Delivered by
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Location
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South Kensington
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Minimum entry standard
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First-Class Honours with a substantial Computing component
Course overview
Study advanced computing concepts and technologies and build on your background in computing on this Master's course.
You'll enhance your skillbase alongside dedicated experts in a world-leading learning environment. The varied programme is designed to prepare you for further research, or for a career orientated towards development and applications in industry.
During your studies, you'll explore up-to-date techniques in computing and software engineering and emerging trends in the industry.
You'll also enhance your practical programming skills and produce an element of original research on an individual project.
Structure
This page is updated regularly to reflect the latest version of the curriculum. However, this information is subject to change.
Find out more about potential course changes.
Please note: it may not always be possible to take specific combinations of modules due to timetabling conflicts. For confirmation, please check with the relevant department.
You’ll choose nine optional modules from the following module list:
Optional modules
Deepen your knowledge of the themes and challenges of host-level native, web, and mobile security and privacy.
Discover how to describe the complexity classes associated with computational problems, and how to fit a particular problem into a class of related problems.
Understand the basic concepts of quantitative finance and financial engineering and build awareness of the major decision, hedging, and pricing problems in finance.
Learn how to design and implement modern statistical machine learning methodologies, as well as inference mechanisms.
Become familiar with the concepts and techniques underlying privacy-enhancing technologies across a variety of areas.
Learn how to design program analyses for classical and probabilistic programs and how to solve the resulting equations and constraints.
Advance your knowledge of the concepts that enable the design and implementation of scalable distributed systems.
Use separation logic to reason compositionally about sequential and concurrent heap-manipulating programs.
Learn how to describe the core principles of autonomous systems learning and calculate mathematical solutions to problems using reinforcement learning theory.
Become familiar with Prolog and develop the knowledge and skills required to write small Prolog applications with an artificial intelligence dimension.
Gain insights into the different types of problems that exist in machine learning and the basic algorithms used to address them.
Assess the best decision algorithms for solving real-life problems arising in computer science, computational management and economics.
Study an advanced computer science topic of your choice and plan, write and present a scientific report.
Discover the basic notions of quantum computing and be introduced to Quantum Bits, Quantum Entanglement and Quantum Algorithms.
Assess modern techniques in realistic computer graphics and image synthesis, particularly image-based techniques for photorealism.
Develop a deeper understanding of optimal decision making models, algorithms and applications to engineering, finance, and machine learning.
Discover how cryptographic techniques can be used to design and implement secure communicating systems for a variety of different needs and applications.
Explore the fundamental concepts and advanced methodologies of deep learning and relate them to real-world problems.
Develop your knowledge of machine learning further by relating back to real-world problems in computer vision and medical image analysis.
Acquire the techniques and tools needed to devise and develop natural language processing (NLP) components and applications.
Analyse the foundational principles behind decentralised ledgers and apply them to current research in cryptocurrencies.
Examine how probability can be used to make decisions by a computer and advance your understanding of inference networks and linear and non-linear methods in statistical pattern recognition.
Assess techniques and tools for improving the reliability of software systems and discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Examine the tools and techniques that software engineers use on a daily basis to successfully build and maintain large software systems.
Discover why knowledge representation and reasoning are essential components of an intelligent system and are at the core of artificial intelligence research.
Develop intellectual and practical skills in the use of modal logics for knowledge representation and automated reasoning in artificial intelligence.
Engage with the emerging field of robot learning and discover how robots can acquire skills and control their bodies using machine learning techniques.
Develop a thorough understanding of high-performance and energy-efficient computer architecture as a basis for informed software performance engineering.
Explore how images are formed, how they are represented on computers and how they can be processed by computers to extract semantic information.
Understand basic concepts of computer graphics and familiarise yourself with the mathematical principles used for computer generated imagery, shading and light approximations.
Examine the approaches that enable the rapid and systematic design of custom computers and learn how to analyse the performance of a custom computer.
Unpick the key concepts, problems and results in distributed algorithms and gain practical experience of programming them.
Study network and web security broadly from the network to the application layer and understand the main threats, attack techniques and defences relevant to cybersecurity and network security.
Analyse how performance engineering ensures computer systems are responsive, scalable, and efficient and explore the fundamental principles and techniques used to achieve these goals.
Gain an in-depth understanding of the state-of-the-art of logic-based learning, starting from its key foundation concepts and principles before moving to more recent advances.
Understand the rationale behind the theoretical end of computational neuroscience and basic principles of the tools needed to simulate the brain's intelligent behaviour in this interdisciplinary module.
Gain a flavour of different aspects of the broad and ever-expanding field of graph theory and learning, including conventional graph data analysis methods and the nascent field of graph neural networks.
Explore the intersection of robotics and human-computer interaction, covering user-centric and user study design, data analysis, and relevant theoretical foundations, in this exciting new field.
Learn elementary tools, methods and results relating to fundamental questions in the theory and practice computing.
Delve into the deep connections between information theory, statistics and machine learning, in this module linking computing, statistics and geometry. Includes mathematical and computational exercises, and provides crucial theoretical background for a career in data science or machine learning.
Demonstrate independence and originality on a substantial and individual project culminating in a dissertation.
Over the final 5 months of your degree you will put into practice some of the techniques that you have learned throughout the course.
The idea for your project may be a proposal from a member of staff or your own, or a combination of the two.
Teaching and assessment
Teaching and learning methods
- Lectures
- Tutorials
- Practical work
- Private study
- Presentations
- Lab work
- Individual project work
- Virtual learning environment
Assessment methods
- Coursework
- Laboratory assignments
- Practical
- Written exams
Entry requirements
How to apply
Apply online
You can submit one application form per year of entry. You can choose up to two courses.
There is no application fee for MRes courses, Postgraduate Certificates, Postgraduate Diplomas, or courses such as PhDs and EngDs.
If you are applying for a taught Master’s course, you will need to pay an application fee before submitting your application.
The fee applies per application and not per course.
- £80 for all taught Master's applications, excluding those to the Imperial College Business School.
- £100 for all MSc applications to the Imperial College Business School.
- £150 for all MBA applications to the Imperial College Business School.
If you are facing financial hardship and are unable to pay the application fee, we encourage you to apply for our application fee waiver.
Find out more about how to apply for a Master's course, including references and personal statements.
An ATAS certificate is not required for students applying for this course.
Tuition fees
Home fee
2025 entry
£23,400
You should expect and budget for your fees to increase each year.
Your fee is based on the year you enter the university, not your year of study. This means that if you repeat a year or resume your studies after an interruption, your fees will only increase by the amount linked to inflation.
Find out more about our tuition fees payment terms, including how inflationary increases are applied to your tuition fees in subsequent years of study.
Whether you pay the Home or Overseas fee depends on your fee status. This is assessed based on UK Government legislation and includes things like where you live and your nationality or residency status. Find out how we assess your fee status.
If you're a UK national, or EU national with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, you may be able to apply for a Postgraduate Master’s Loan from the UK government, if you meet certain criteria.
For courses starting on or after 1 August 2024, the maximum amount is £12,471. The loan is not means-tested and you can choose whether to put it towards your tuition fees or living costs.
The loan is not means-tested and you can choose whether to put it towards your tuition fees or living costs.
Overseas fee
2025 entry
£43,800
You should expect and budget for your fees to increase each year.
Your fee is based on the year you enter the university, not your year of study. This means that if you repeat a year or resume your studies after an interruption, your fees will only increase by the amount linked to inflation.
Find out more about our tuition fees payment terms, including how inflationary increases are applied to your tuition fees in subsequent years of study.
Whether you pay the Home or Overseas fee depends on your fee status. This is assessed based on UK Government legislation and includes things like where you live and your nationality or residency status. Find out how we assess your fee status.
If you're a UK national, or EU national with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme, you may be able to apply for a Postgraduate Master’s Loan from the UK government, if you meet certain criteria.
For courses starting on or after 1 August 2024, the maximum amount is £12,471. The loan is not means-tested and you can choose whether to put it towards your tuition fees or living costs.
The loan is not means-tested and you can choose whether to put it towards your tuition fees or living costs.
How will studying at Imperial help my career?
Develop the essential core knowledge and skills for a computing career.
Consider this course if you're pursuing a career in industry, or if you're interested in a research career in academia or industry.
With an Imperial Computing degree, you'll be able to explore a variety of career opportunities.
Graduates are sought after in roles such as application/web development, networking, AI, media, finance, robotics, and computer games.
Other potential career paths include chip design, cyber security, data management, bio-medical systems and transport
Further links
Contact the department
- Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7594 8298
- Email: doc-mscadmissions@imperial.ac.uk
Course Director: Robert Craven
Visit the Department of Computing website.
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Terms and conditions
There are some important pieces of information you should be aware of when applying to Imperial. These include key information about your tuition fees, funding, visas, accommodation and more.
You can find further information about your course, including degree classifications, regulations, progression and awards in the programme specification for your course.
Programme specifications