Melbourne School of Engineering

Informatics

Informatics is about using computers to work with digital information – gathering, using, storing, retrieving, and visualising information and data. It is the study of tools and technologies to solve problems in all types of settings, such as finance, economics, journalism, biology, health, engineering and communication. Informatics is available to engineering and science students through the Bachelor of Science. It can also be studied as a breadth subject for Arts, Commerce, Environments and Music students. Informatics students map data from a global network of temperature sensors, use linguistic modelling to try to understand how language has changed over time, track global trends in finance and cross-reference against off-the-wire news stories. They design web pages, build web applications with a simple and powerful programming language and work with sophisticated graphics processing packages to solve practical information-based problems.

Students who want to study informatics can undertake the:

Followed by a two-year Master of Engineering (Software) or a Master of Information Systems.

Careers

Informatics can help organisations like banks work better by improving information flows, enable doctors to track the way a disease spreads through the population and analyse social networks to understand how people relate and interact.

Sample course plan Bachelor of Science (Informatics)*

Year 1 Sem 1 Informatics 1: Practical Computing  Mathematics  Science Elective  What is Knowledge & How do we Acquire it? (Breadth) 
Sem 2 Informatics 2: People, Data & The Web  Mathematics  Science Elective  Music & Health (Breadth) 
Year 2 Sem 1 Informatics 3: Content Management  Science Elective  Science Elective  Thinking, Reasoning & Learning (Breadth) 
Sem 2 Information Modelling  Visualising Information  Science Elective  Ways of Knowing & Learning (Breath) 
Year 3 Sem 1 Distributed Information  Science Informatics in Practice  Science Elective  Knowledge Learning & Culture (Breadth) 
Sem 2 Human Computer interaction  Mobile Computing  Science Elective  Creativity & Knowledge Enhancement (Breadth) 

Followed by postgraduate studies

*This sample is provided as a guide only. Subject availability will vary from year to year and there is no guarantee that the listed subjects will be available in future years.

Further information