Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Computer Systems

at Heriot-Watt University - Edinburgh Campus United Kingdom

Edinburgh is the UK’s second biggest financial centre outside of London, and Heriot-Watt University enjoys a well-established reputation in the world of accountancy and financial services. As a reflection of this reputation, we were ranked as the second best university in Scotland for undergraduate accounting and finance degrees in the Guardian University League Tables 2019.

MA (Hons) Accountancy and Finance at the Edinburgh Business School is designed and taught by practising professionals and respected academics. It offers you the chance to develop the skills and knowledge needed for a successful career in accountancy and financial services.

The industry focus of this degree, and its breadth of accreditations, make it possible for you to gain the maximum number of exemptions from professional accountancy exams, offering the strongest possible foundation from which to launch your career.

You can enhance your employability in the area of finance through use of our state-of-the-art Bloomberg Trading Room. This professional-standard facility provides access to live financial data from global markets and organisations. Integrating use of Bloomberg Terminals into our teaching develops professionally relevant skills in data analysis, financial reporting, financial risk management and financial modelling.

The majority of our MA (Hons) Accountancy and Finance graduates go on to become chartered accountants in either professional practice, industry, or the public sector, but many go on to successful careers in banking and finance. A survey by Unistats 2019 found that 91% of recent graduates were in work or further study six months after graduating.

Our MSc Financial Mathematics covers the advanced mathematics that’s revolutionised finance since the early 1970's. If you’re passionate about mathematics and keen to build a career in finance, it could be the ideal choice. The masters in Financial Mathematics course is part of the Maxwell Institute for Mathematical Sciences. It offers an intensive training in the mathematical ideas and tools vital to the finance industry. So it’ll equip you for a range of exciting and potentially high-earning career opportunities.

The MSc Financial Mathematics is part of a joint programme between us and the University of Edinburgh. So you’ll be fully enrolled at both universities. That means access to all the services offered by each institution, plus a degree certificate with both universities named as the awarding bodies.

Specific roles will depend on the nature of the organisation, including, but not limited to:

• Team Leader
• Team Manager
• Operations Manager
• Investment Operations Analyst

Key areas of the programme:

• The primary focus of the Business Management: Financial Services Graduate Apprenticeship programme is on developing the knowledge, understanding and skills outcomes sought by employers.

The postgraduate course in Urban Strategies and Design is delivered jointly by the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA) of the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University.

This course addresses the current need for interdisciplinary knowledge. It encourages the adoption of a comprehensive approach towards the delivery of socially-sustainable urban transformation, from local-specific to strategic metropolitan and regional interventions. Students study the wide and diverse range of social, economic, and political processes that determine the contemporary urban environment, and acquire the tools and skills to propose urban projects of diverse scales and specificities.

The City of Edinburgh offers an urban laboratory for project- and site visit-based exploration of current urban design issues in the UK. Furthermore, the city’s historic 'Geddesian' planning links, and contemporary international links with urban-focused institutions and bodies provide a strong platform from which to support student-led, location-based research projects.

Our masters degree in Interpreting is designed for those who have native/near-native command of English and one other language from:

• Chinese
• French
• German
• Spanish.

You will be taught by experts from the fields of interpreting practice, linguistics, research and education and given the chance to bring your skills to a professional standard through regular practice in our newly-refurbished interpreting booths, which are modelled on those used by the United Nations and the European Union.

This programme is designed for those who want to work as professional interpreters and has been thoughtfully designed to give you expertise to use in a range of contexts including:

• Conference interpreting
• Health-care interpreting
• Legal interpretingEuropean exchange
• Simultaneous interpreting
• Educational interpreting.

This practical interpreting programme provides around 15 hours of academic contact per week in our language labs including weekly multilingual mock-conferences in our interpreting labs.

This is an advanced, specialist course in the rapidly expanding area of renewable energy engineering with a clear Mechanical Engineering focus. The course is aimed at students wishing to develop critical understanding of the significant changes afoot in the energy system due to the development and integration of wind, marine, biomass and solar technologies. The course will enable graduates to develop and implement creative solutions to the problems encountered in renewable energy capture, conversion, storage and management.

Students will gain the knowledge and skills to assess renewable energy resources, design appropriate renewable energy systems, evaluate the performance of these systems and assess the wider impacts of renewable energy development. The course provides introductory courses to fundamental energy science and current energy issues, while the project-led courses focus on the design of renewable energy systems. The course concludes with a research-led dissertation in the summer.

Renewable energy research focuses on six main areas:

• Photovoltaics and Solar Energy
• Wind and Marine Energy
• Renewable Energy Systems
• Minimising CO2 Emissions
• Biofuels
• Wind and Marine Energy

If you too are interested in a career in games design, our brand new Master of Design (MDes) programme in Games Design and Development allows you to explore your own creativity, develop game ideas, and launch your own games

Design your own games
The School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences is delighted to introduce a new Master of Design (MDes) programme in Games Design and Development, available for 2019 entry. This innovative programme provides students with a unique opportunity to design and develop their own computer game to the highest industry standards while gaining hands-on experience with the product lifecycle, gathering technical and professional skills, and further practical entrepreneurship knowledge. It is the perfect stepping stone to enable students to smoothly transition to design and programming roles in the games industry.

Our new Games Studio
The introduction of this Masters degree coincides with the launch of the new purpose-built Games Studio inside our new £19m innovation and entrepreneurship GRID building.  As there are only a handful of universities worldwide capable of offering such design-led programmes, this studio will provide students with a unique mixture of practical supervised studio learning experience, technical know-how, and an interdisciplinary entrepreneurship approach to Games production.

This masters degree is designed to enhance your employment potential across international banking, accounting and finance functions of multinational organisations.

With a focus on the ever-changing global financial markets, this MSc in Accounting and Finance aims to equip graduates with highly employable expertise and a thorough understanding of current issues in global financial markets – both academically and professionally.

On this MSc you will take six main courses on the subject of international accounting and be offered a choice of one specialist per semester. These courses will give you an international perspective on accounting and help you understand things like national differences, harmonisation and the challenges and problems facing multinational companies.

You will have the opportunity to apply your newly acquired knowledge and expertise gained from courses in international banking, financial markets and accountancy to a subject of interest to you in your dissertation research project which is undertaken during the summer months.

Data science today is becoming increasingly important within the actuarial field, and Heriot-Watt has developed this unique new programme to meet this growing actuarial demand.

Taking our MSc in Actuarial Management with Data Science is a great way to speed your progress to this most prestigious of careers - it's designed to take you almost all of the way to qualification. Our MSc in Actuarial Management is an established and successful programme covering the more advanced actuarial subjects.The MSc in Actuarial Management with Data Science introduces exciting new opportunities for actuaries of the future.

Entry to the actuarial profession is by a demanding series of examinations, but the rewards after qualifying are great. The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in the UK has four levels of examinations to qualify. The first level, the Core Principles (CS, CM and CB) subjects, are taught in our BSc or MSc in Actuarial Science and lead to exemptions from subjects CS1, CS2, CM1, CM2, CB1 and CB2. Students will typically study CP1, CP2, CP3, two SP subjects (two SP subjects are needed to satisfy the profession's requirements) and two courses on data science applied to insurance.

Actuarial data science combines advanced statistical modelling and analysis with modern computational techniques in order to analyse potentially large datasets arising in insurance and finance. These analyses have the ability to improve forecasts and enhance decision making in an uncertain environment where rapid advancements in technology and data availability are transforming fields of actuarial work. Additionally, they are building synergies with new sectors such as medical and healthcare. This is an area of science and technology that is attracting significant interest and that will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, as more and more industries adopt data-driven and data-centric approaches.

Students graduating from the MSc will have excellent employment prospects that are not restricted to any one narrow sector of financial services. By their choice of IFoA subjects, they may target the life, pensions, asset management, investment and risk management sectors. They will be in demand in quantitative risk management roles in both banks and insurance companies, as well as fund management companies, hedge funds, consultancies, software vendors and regulatory authorities. The market for graduates with actuarial qualifications complemented with data science skills is growing fast and we expect that it will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Heriot-Watt University's Interpreting and Translating MSc degree is a twin-focus programme of study which will prepare you for an exciting, international career as a professional translator and interpreter in one or two of the following languages combined with English:

• Chinese
• French
• German
• Spanish

This specialist programme has been tailored to meet the needs of industry and will allow you to develop the ideal balance of theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

Studying MSc Interpreting and Translation at Heriot-Watt University will give you access to our excellent translation and interpreting facilities which include our recently refurbished interpreting labs.

Your learning will focus on developing a professional standard of expertise in specific areas of interpreting and translation such as:

• Technical and scientific translation
• Subtitling and audio-visual translation
• Use of Computer Aided Translation tools
• Sight translation
• Simultaneous interpreting
• Consecutive interpreting and note taking
• Sight translation

You will develop these skills to the highest standard and learn about the different approaches and skillsets required from interpreters when working in distinct professional contexts such as healthcare, court and legal, educational and conference interpreting.