This unit will provide an overview of the different research methods that are used in IT. Students will learn to find and evaluate research on their topic and to present their own research plan or results for evaluation by others. The unit will develop a better understanding of what research in IT is and how it differs from other projects in IT. Students will learn research ethics. This unit of study is required for students in IT who are enrolled in a research project as part of their Honours or MIT/MITM degree. It is also recommended for students enrolled or planning to do a research degree in IT and Engineering.

Students enrolled in the Honours programs study various advanced aspects of Information Technology. The program may include lectures, tutorials, seminars and practicals. They will undertake a research project. Assessment will include the project and may include examinations and classwork.

Students enrolled in the Honours programs study various advanced aspects of Information Technology. The program may include lectures, tutorials, seminars and practicals. They will undertake a research project. Assessment will include the project and may include examinations and classwork.

All SIT Honours students must enrol in this non assessable unit of study in their final semester.

In many areas of computer science- robotics, computer graphics, virtual reality, and geographic information systems are some examples- it is necessary to store, analyse, and create or manipulate spatial data. This course deals with the algorithmic aspects of these tasks: we study techniques and concepts needed for the design and analysis of geometric algorithms and data structures. Each technique and concept will be illustrated on the basis of a problem arising in one of the application areas mentioned above.

This unit introduces computational linguistics and the statistical techniques and algorithms used to automatically process natural languages (such as English or Chinese). It will review the core statistics and information theory, and the basic linguistics, required to understand statistical natural language processing (NLP).
Statistical NLP is used in a wide range of applications, including information retrieval and extraction; question answering; machine translation; and classifying and clustering of documents. This unit will explore the key challenges of natural language to computational modelling, and the state of the art approaches to the key NLP sub-tasks, including tokenisation, morphological analysis, word sense representation, part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition and other information extraction, text categorisation, phrase structure parsing and dependency parsing.
Students will implement many of these sub-tasks in labs and assignments. The unit will also investigate the annotation process that is central to creating training data for statistical NLP systems. Students will annotate data as part of completing a real-world NLP task.

This is an advanced course on Pervasive Computing, with a focus on the "Internet of Things" (IoT). It introduces the key aspects of the IoT and explores these in terms of the new research towards creating user interfaces that disappear into the environment and are available pervasively, for example in homes, workplaces, cars and carried.

Visual Analytics aims to facilitate the data analytics process through Information Visualisation. Information Visualisation aims to make good pictures of abstract information, such as stock prices, family trees, and software design diagrams. Well designed pictures can convey this information rapidly and effectively. The challenge for Visual Analytics is to design and implement effective Visualisation methods that produce pictorial representation of complex data so that data analysts from various fields (bioinformatics, social network, software visualisation and network) can visually inspect complex data and carry out critical decision making. This unit will provide basic HCI concepts, visualisation techniques and fundamental algorithms to achieve good visualisation of abstract information. Further, it will also provide opportunities for academic research and developing new methods for Visual Analytic methods.

Machine learning is the process of automatically building mathematical models that explain and generalise datasets. It integrates elements of statistics and algorithm development into the same discipline. Data mining is a discipline within knowledge discovery that seeks to facilitate the exploration and analysis of large quantities for data, by automatic and semiautomatic means. This subject provides a practical and technical introduction to machine learning and data mining.
Topics to be covered include problems of discovering patterns in the data, classification, regression, feature extraction and data visualisation. Also covered are analysis, comparison and usage of various types of machine learning techniques and statistical techniques.

This unit of study gives a comprehensive overview of post-relational data models and of latest developments in data storage technology.
Particular emphasis is put on spatial, temporal, and NoSQL data storage. This unit extensively covers the advanced features of SQL:2003, as well as a few dominant NoSQL storage technologies. Besides in lectures, the advanced topics will be also studied with prescribed readings of database research publications.

Nowadays most client facing enterprise applications are running on web or at least with a web interface. The design and implementation of a web application require totally different set of skills to those are required for traditional desktop applications. All web applications are of client/ server architecture. Requests sent to a web application are expected to go through the public Internet, which slows the responsiveness and increases the possible security threat. A typical web application is also expected to handle large number of requests coming from every corner of the Internet and sent by all sorts of client systems. This further complicates the design of such system.
This course aims at providing both conceptual understanding and hand-on experiences for the technologies used in building web applications. We will examine how data/messages are communicated between client and server; how to improve the responsiveness using rich client technology; as well as how to build a secure web application.
At the end of this course, students are expected to have a clear understanding of the structure and technologies of web applications. Students are also expected to have practical knowledge of some major web application environments and to be able to develop and deploy simple web applications. Cloud based platform are increasingly popular as the development and deployment platform. This course will incorporate the cloud aspect of web application development as well.

This unit covers topics on software architecture for large-scale enterprises. Computer systems for large-scale enterprises handle critical business processes, interact with computer systems of other organisations, and have to be highly reliable, available and scalable. This class of systems are built up from several application components, incorporating existing "legacy" code and data stores as well as linking these through middleware technologies, such as distributed transaction processing, remote objects, message-queuing, publish-subscribe, and clustering. The choice of middleware can decide whether the system achieves essential non- functional requirements such as performance and availability. The objective of this unit of study is to educate students for their later professional career and it covers Software Architecture topics of the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering curriculum. Objective: The objective of this unit of study is to educate students for their later professional career and it covers topics of the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering curriculum.

This unit provides principles and practicalities of creating interactive and effective multimedia products. It gives an overview of the complete spectrum of different media platforms and current authoring techniques used in multimedia production. Coverage includes the following key topics: enabling multimedia technologies; multimedia design issues; interactive 2D and 3D computer animation; multimedia object modelling and rendering; multimedia scripting programming; post-production and delivery of multimedia applications.

The unit introduces networking concepts beyond the best effort service of the core TCP/IP protocol suite. Understanding of the fundamental issues in building an integrated multi-service network for global Internet services, taking into account service objectives, application characteristics and needs and network mechanisms will be discussed. Enables students to understand the core issues and be aware of proposed solutions so they can actively follow and participate in the development of the Internet beyond the basic bit transport service.

Information technology (IT) has significantly contributed to the research and practice of medicine, biology and health care. The IT field is growing enormously in scope with biomedicine taking a lead role in utilising the evolving applications to its best advantage. The goal of this unit of study is to provide students with the necessary knowledge to understand the information technology in biomedicine. The major emphasis will be on the principles associated with biomedical digital imaging systems and related biomedicine data processing, analysis, visualisation, registration, modelling, retrieval and management. A broad range of practical integrated clinical applications will be also elaborated.

The explosive growth of multimedia data, including text, audio, images and video has imposed unprecedented challenges for search engines to meet various information needs of users. This unit provides students with the necessary and updated knowledge of this field in the context of big data, from the information retrieval basics of a search engine, to many advanced techniques towards next generation search engines, such as content based image and video retrieval, large scale visual information retrieval, and social media.

This unit is intended to introduce and motivate the study of high performance computer systems. The student will be presented with the foundational concepts pertaining to the different types and classes of high performance computers. The student will be exposed to the description of the technological context of current high performance computer systems. Students will gain skills in evaluating, experimenting with, and optimising the performance of high performance computers. The unit also provides students with the ability to undertake more advanced topics and courses on high performance computing.

This unit will introduce the key ideas in modern wireless telecommunications networks. It will address both physical layer issues such as propagation and modulation, plus network layer issues such as capacity, radio resource management and mobility management issues.
The following topics are covered. Wireless channel: Multipath fading, frequency selective fading, Doppler spread, statistical models, diversity, GSM, OFDM. Capacity and Interference: Cell types, coverage, frequency reuse, interference management, SIMO, MISO, multiuser diversity, CDMA, OFDMA, beamforming, superposition coding. MIMO: SVD, waterfilling, beamforming, V-BLAST, SIC, MMSE, Power Allocation. LTE/LTE-Advanced: Uplink-downlink channels, control signals, data transmission, spatial multiplexing, CoMP, spectrum reuse, heterogeneous networks, inter-cell interference coordination, carrier aggregation. Queueing theory: basic models, queueing systems, waiting time, delay, queue length, priority queues, wireless network virtualization (WNV) queues.

This unit of study serves as an introduction to communications network research. The unit relies on a solid understanding of data communications and mobile networks. It introduces some of the currently most debated research topics in mobile networking and presents an overview of different technical solutions. Students are expected to critically evaluate these solutions in their context and produce an objective analysis of the advantages/disadvantages of the different research proposals. The general areas covered are wireless Internet, mobility management, quality of service in mobile and IP networks, ad hoc networks, and cellular network architectures.
The following topics are covered. Introduction to wireless and mobile Internet. Wireless cellular data networks. Cellular mobile networks. Mobile networks of the future. Quality of service in a mobile environment. Traffic modelling for wireless Internet. Traffic management for wireless Internet. Mobility management in mobile networks. Transport protocols for mobile networks. Internet protocols for mobile networks.

This unit aim to teach the fundamentals concepts associated with: Networked Embedded Systems, wireless sensor networks; Wireless channel propagation and radio power consumption; Wireless networks, ZigBee, Bluetooth, etc. ; Sensor principle, data fusion, source detection and identification; Multiple source detection, multiple access communications; Network topology, routing, network information theory; Distributed source channel coding for sensor networks; Power-aware and energy-aware communication protocols; Distributed embedded systems problems such as time synchronization and node localisation; Exposure to several recently developed solutions to address problems in wireless sensor networks and ubiquitous computing giving them a well-rounded view of the state-of the-art in the networked embedded systems field.
Student involvement with projects will expose them to the usage of simulators and/or programming some types of networked embedded systems platforms.
Ability to identify the main issues and trade-offs in networked embedded systems; Understanding of the state-of-the-art solutions in the area; Based on the above understanding, ability to analyse requirements and devise first-order solutions for particular networked embedded systems problems; Familiarisation with a simulator platform and real hardware platforms for network embedded systems through the students involvement in projects.

This unit examines the basic cryptographic building blocks of security, working through to their applications in authentication, key exchange, secret and public key encryption, digital signatures, protocols and systems. It then considers these applications in the real world, including models for integrity, authentication, electronic cash, viruses, firewalls, electronic voting, risk assessment, secure web browsers and electronic warfare. Practical cryptosystems are analysed with regard to the assumptions with which they were designed, their limitations, failure modes and ultimately why most end up broken.

This unit will cover software quality planning, validation and verification methods and techniques, risk analysis, software review techniques, software standards and software process improvement and software reliability.
Students who successfully complete this unit will understand the fundamental concepts of software quality engineering and be able to define software quality requirements, assess the quality of a software design, explain specific methods of building software quality, understand software reliability models and metrics, develop a software quality plan, understand quality assurance and control activities and techniques, understand various testing techniques including being able to verify and test a unit of code and comprehend ISO standards, SPICE, CMM and CMMI.

This unit aims to introduce students to the main issues involved in producing large Internet systems by using and building application frameworks. Frameworks allow great reuse so developers do not have to design and implement applications from scratch, as students have done in ELEC3610 The unit lays down the basic concepts and hands on experience on the design and development of enterprise systems, emphasizing the development of systems using design patterns and application frameworks.
A project-based approach will introduce the problems often found when building such systems, and will require students to take control of their learning. A project-based approach will introduce the problems often found when building such systems, and will require students to take control of their learning. Several development Java frameworks will be used, including Spring, Hibernate, and others. Principles of design patterns will also be studied.

Model-Based Software Engineering focuses on modern software engineering methods, technologies, and processes used in professional development projects. It covers both the pragmatic engineering elements and the underlying theory of the model-based approach to the analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance of complex software-intensive systems.
Students will participate in a group project, which will entail developing and/or evolving a software system, following a full development cycle from requirements specification through to implementation and testing using up-to-date industrial development tools and processes. At the end of the course they will provide a presentation and demonstration of their project work to the class. There is no formal teaching of a programming language in this unit, although students will be expected to demonstrate through their project work their general software engineering and architectural skills as well as their mastery of model-based methods and technologies.
Students successfully completing this unit will have a strong practical and theoretical understanding of the modern software development cycle as applied in industrial settings. In particular, they will be familiar with the latest model-based software engineering approaches necessary for successfully dealing with today's highly complex and challenging software systems.
The pedagogic grounds for this course and its focus on model-based approaches are to arm new software engineers with skills and perspectives that extend beyond the level of basic programming. Such skills are essential to success in software development nowadays, and are in great demand but very low supply. The dearth of such expertise is one of the key reasons behind the alarmingly high failure rate of industrial software projects (currently estimated at being greater than 40%). Therefore, this unit complements SQE and strengthens a key area in the program.

This unit will cover some topic of active and cutting-edge research within IT; the content of this unit may be varied depending on special opportunities such as a distinguished researcher visiting the University.

The service economy plays a dominant and growing role in economic growth and employment in most parts of the world. Increasingly, the improved productivity and competitive performance of firms and nations in services relies on innovative and effective design, engineering, and management of IT-centric services.
This unit offers IT graduates and professionals an understanding of the role of IT-centric services in a social, economic and business context, as well as knowledge of the principles of their design, engineering and management in a service-oriented IT framework. Delivery of the unit is driven by a critical approach to the literature, live case studies presented by industry professionals and writing a Consultants' Report. Its learning outcomes are based on industry needs. Three modules address the range of topics in Services Science, Management and Engineering (SSME).
1. Service fundamentals context and strategy: the service economy and the nature of service systems; the role IT-centric services in a social, economic and business context; IT-centric services optimisation and innovation.
2. Designing and Engineering IT-centric services: service design; service oriented enterprise and IT architecture.
3. Sourcing, governing, and managing IT-centric services: outsourcing IT-centric services (including services in the cloud); IT-centric services governance and management (COBIT and ITIL; service level agreements.
Critical analysis of articles and the persuasive use of evidence in writing are cornerstones of the unit. Students learn how to apply these skills in business consulting processes to a business case drawn from a recent consulting project at a large multinational organisation. The processes include:clarifying the client's situation and problems, researching evidence related to it, analysing the evidence, developing options for solving the problems, presenting recommendations persuasively to the client both orally and in a written Consultants' Report. These steps are scaffolded for the student, with formative assessment, and increasing levels of difficulty.
Students need to be able to read, critically analyse, and report on an article or case study every three weeks. If you are not confident of your skills in these areas, you can enroll in the free courses provided by the University's Learning Centre in Academic Reading and Writing and Oral Communication Skills. Some of these courses are specifically designed for students with a non-English speaking background. Familiarity with using Library reference tools and the ability to locate scholarly resources in the Library's electronic databases is also necessary. See the Library's Research and information skills page for help with this http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/skills/

An essential skill for an IT manager is the ability to keep up-to-date with emerging technologies, and be able to evaluate the significance of these technologies to their organisation's business activities. This unit of study is based around a study of current technologies and the influence of these technologies on business strategies.
Important trends in innovation in IT are identified and their implications for innovation management explored. Major topics include: drivers of innovation; the trend to open information ("open source") rather than protected intellectual property; and distribution of innovation over many independent but collaborating actors.
On completion of this unit, students will be able to identify and analyse an emerging technology and write a detailed evaluation of the impact of this technology on existing business practices.

The increasingly strategic role of IT in organisations is widely recognised. This unit of study is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to strategic aspects of IT as they impact on business value. Such a perspective is critical for IT professionals in both IT producer and user organisations from the level of Chief Information Officer to managers as well as technical specialists. Deep understanding of IT strategy formulation and implementation and ensuring its alignment with the organisation's strategic directions is important for successfully managing the major changes that the IT function has undergone in recent years. Topics covered will include assessment of IT impacts, achieving sustainable competitive advantage through IT, relationship between IT strategy and value, IT strategy formulation and implementation, evaluation of strategic investments in IT, IT portfolio management, IT sourcing and open innovation, and dynamics of IT strategy and game theory. It will explore IT-related strategic decision making at the different organisational levels and the concept of strategic congruence. This unit will also provide students with models, tools, and techniques to evaluate an organisation's IT strategic position, and hence to help make appropriate strategic choices.

The need to track and facilitate the sharing of the core knowledge resources in contemporary organisations is widely recognised. This course will provide a comprehensive introduction to the area of Knowledge Management (KM) from both technological and organisational perspectives. We will review and discuss a range of published papers, case studies, and other publications that deal with a range of important KM-related topics. One of the key knowledge management technologies, Business Intelligence Systems, will be covered in detail. It will also include hands-on work using the BI (Online Analytical Processing- OLAP) tool, COGNOS.
Some of the main themes to be covered will include: KM- Conceptual Foundations; Taxonomies of organizational knowledge and KM mechanisms; Case/Field Studies of KM Initiatives; Data Warehousing and OLAP/Business Analytics; Data, text, and web mining; Social media,crowdsourcing, and KM; Big data and actionable knowledge.