The Faculty of Information & Communications Technology was established in 2007 under the auspices of the rector Professor Juanito Camilleri as a result of a need for a specific and independent entity whose main focus and concern is ICT. 

Information and Communications Technology

Information and knowledge are crucial assets in the 21st century, underpinning the continuing revolution that is taking place in all major sectors of the modern economy, such as banking, education, health, finance, manufacturing and entertainment.

ICT stands for Information and Communications Technology, a spectrum of sub-disciplines that are unified by their concern with the definition, representation, communication and processing of information using computer and networking technologies. These technologies have a key role to play in the development of knowledge-critical assets that improve the ability of national and global infrastructures to collect and manage data, to provide services, to monitor performance and to plan effectively for the future. 

 

Importance of ICT Education

ICT is already transforming the fabric of emerging economies in India and China. Evidently, in Malta, the pace of ICT uptake is also increasing rapidly. This is due to a number of factors: the ongoing process of globalisation, the phenomenal rate of adoption of mobile technologies and services, the realisation by small and medium-sized enterprises that investment in ICT is necessary for effective competition. In the past decade, several SMEs operating in the ICT sector with an international clientele have established roots here. Moreover Government has just set up a number of strategic partnerships with some of the larger players including Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems etc.

Even at present, ICT companies are experiencing a skill shortage. With investments like that of Smart City, it is clear that unless concrete educational initiatives are taken to increase numbers, the skill shortage is set to become more severe. Both the Government and the Opposition have clearly indicated ICT to be one of the major growth areas in the foreseeable future, both have expressed themselves in favour of the setting up of a Faculty of ICT at the University, and both have expressed dismay at the fact that the University has not taken proactive action on this front particularly as demand for ICT graduates and researchers is on the increase.

The skill shortage that affects Malta’s ability to compete in the ICT area exists at three levels.

• The first “technician” level, is required by local industries seeking employees with a sound level of competence in well-established programming and networking technologies.

• The second “graduate” level goes beyond technical mastery of any particular technologies, requiring an understanding of design issues, some experience with management of complex projects, and an ability to adapt to rapidly evolving systems and new technologies. This is typically the level of competence achieved by University of Malta graduates, at honours degree level.

• The third, “postgraduate” level involves the deployment of a significant degree of innovation. Experience in other European countries strongly suggests that if innovation is to percolate through to practice in the industrial sphere, there has to be a solid infrastructure supporting innovative research upon which it can be built. This in turn depends upon the existence of a focused strategy for instigating and maintaining research at University and a large increase in the number of masters and doctoral level graduate students generated in relevant areas.
  

The provision of an appropriate level of ICT expertise is a critical factor for the future educational policy of the University of Malta, which is well placed to support these requirements but only if it enhances the range of ICT courses offered at diploma, undergraduate and the postgraduate levels on a part-time as well as full-time basis. For this to be possible, it must properly focus its current resources and also position itself to attract further funding from both Government and Industry
 

Typical ICT student profile

Interested in various aspects of computing including systems behaviour and programming languages, algorithmic and abstract reasoning? Are you looking at an engineering course on multimedia processing and communication systems, embedded and computational hardware systems? Would you like to gain access to accurate computational theory and systems development? Would you like to study issues from multiple perspectives? Do you wish to learn more about how to produce higher quality and intelligent solutions to real-world problems and use modern technological approaches? Is professional behaviour something you feel would enhance your personal profile? Would you like to have access to a wider range of career opportunities by being able to re-orientate your acquired skills with ease?
 

Degree Program in Communications and Computer Engineering

Communications Engineering is concerned with the efficient, reliable and secure transmission of text, speech, audio, image, video and other data types from some source to one or more points of destination. This could be achieved over small or large distances and over wired, optical or wireless links. Computer Engineering is concerned with the application of algorithms and digital design principles to design, build, and test computer software and hardware systems used for information processing, communication, and storage. Communications and Computer Engineering are at the heart of the digital revolution that makes it possible for instance to transmit video signals from one computer to another over the Internet or to a mobile phone. The course covers all aspects of such systems – from the capture of the signal, to the processing of the signal using digital computational elements, to the transmission and correct reproduction of the signal. Computer Engineering does not just deal with Personal or Super Computers, but also with Embedded Systems. These are devices (microprocessors) incorporated in everyday or industrial appliances (such as fridges, televisions or printing machines) that give these appliances computational power that would enhance their operation in a significant way (for example eliminating frost in a fridge). Software and hardware co-design is usually an important aspect tackled in such systems.

This course merges aspects of the Computer Systems Engineering stream in the previous BSc IT (Hons) degree and the areas of Communications and Computer Engineering previously covered in the B.Eng. (Hons) degree. The new course format is designed to better prepare engineers working in these fields where a strong emphasis on software design is required backed by a strong background in digital system hardware design. The course also offers elective study units in Micro and nanoelectronics dealing with the design and testing of vlsi circuits and smart Microsystems.

Degree Program in Computer Information Systems

Information Systems is concerned with the collection, transformation, management and dissemination in an efficient, reliable and secure and integral way of Enterprise and organizational information.

Modern information is distributed to end users within organizations in multimedia format over client/server and distributed systems based on intranets. The main aim is to make organisations more competitive and to use information as a major strategic asset.

Three of the major objectives in Information Systems is to improve customer relation management, to make procurement and supply chains more effective and to integrate IT within the business objectives of the organization.

One of the major areas within Information systems is Enterprise Computing which manages in a holistic integrated way an enterprise wide information model. Another important area is database management and data warehousing which not only concerns itself with securing the corporate information but also exploits the information in the companies’ computer system to profile the main interests of the client base, anticipate client needs and provide a better one stop customer service. IS graduates also provide business systems analysis and project management skills in the development of application systems and subsequently code and manage computer systems over the whole software lifecycle.

The course will develop such skills in a number of different application areas in particular in the fields of business, banking and finance, government, utilility systems and in the healthcare industry.
 

Degree Program in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAI)

CSAI is basically made up of two fundamental components Computer Science (CS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In broad terms, CS relates to the study of computing from the point of view of software engineering, the science of systems development, measurement, implementation, knowledge representation and human-computer interaction. CS attempts to reason about programs including their computational complexity, correctness, efficiency and development. Another aspect of CS is the study of operating systems and underlying principles, together with distributed and concurrent processing and other lower-level systems programming. CS also deals with network technology and Internet programming as well as the study and application of programming paradigms. The AI component will focus mainly on such areas as the intelligent machine behaviour (machine learning), the improvement of searching capabilities within the Web (searching and adaptive systems), the very interesting and widely applicable area of human language technology, as well as other areas like specialised software components to assist people in exploiting the Web potential, development and customisation of e-learning approaches, and the use of unique distinctive human attributes in technology (bio-informatics).
 

Degree Program in Information and Communication Technology

This degree is a comprehensive degree that has as subject areas course modules of the main three streams. A student following this degree program will develop a sound overview of the area spanning communications and computer engineering to programming and software system design to databases and information systems. This degree program is offered also as part-time in the evening so that students can switch from a day course to an evening course. While it lacks the depth in a particular ICT area that is developed in the other main streams, it gives a sound base for further development.

ICT career options

Depending on your chosen specialisation stream, you will be ideally placed for employment as senior software developer, system architect, computer engineer, communications engineer, computer network engineer, vlsi and microsystems design and test engineer, tenure-track university positions, chief technology officer, research coordinator, senior research officer, software engineer (analyst and designer) and team leader, system administrator, E.I. technical infrastructure development and management, Internet/Web developer, and many others. Typical employers would include banks and financial institutions, insurance companies, consulting firms, manufacturing companies, computer and Internet-related companies, multimedia related companies, government agencies, education and research institutions, businesses with integrated enterprise systems, telecommunication companies and many others.