Announcements¶
Introduction¶
The Independent Research Project (IRP) is the capstone module in the Ada Lovelace Academy at Imperial College London for the following MSc courses:
The IRP enables students to work independently on a relevant real-world research question or an industrial challenge by designing and implementing a computational solution. Unlike other modules, the project topic and scope are often not well prescribed. Students take on much greater responsibility for project organisation and management, and the IRP is as much a learning opportunity as it is an assessment: students are expected to strengthen existing skills, acquire new ones, and build experience in writing, presenting, and discussing technical material in preparation for their post-MSc careers.
It takes place over the summer following completion of the taught modules (for the full IRP schedule, see Schedule; for the MSc curriculum, see MSc curriculum). The IRP is a full-time commitment, and students are expected to dedicate approximately 40 hours per week to it. Upon successful completion, students should be able to:
Develop a computational solution from scratch, substantially extend the capabilities of existing code, or build a model to analyse and interpret a substantial dataset.
Contribute to an active research field or commercial project.
Creatively and critically employ techniques to solve open-ended, real-world, challenging problems.
Effectively communicate their work through written reports and defend it under critical questioning.
MSc curriculum¶
Figure 1:The IRP is the last module students do after the completion of taught modules.