About the IRP
Students work independently on a relevant real-world research question or industrial challenge. Each student is guided by a supervisor at Imperial or at an external company or university. Unlike in taught modules, the project topic and scope are often not well prescribed, and students take on much greater responsibility for organising and managing their own work. The IRP is as much a learning opportunity as it is an assessment: students strengthen existing skills, acquire new ones, and gain experience in writing, presenting, and discussing technical material in preparation for their post-MSc careers.
Upon successful completion, students should be able to:
Creatively and critically employ computational techniques to solve open-ended, real-world, challenging problems.
Contribute to an active research field or commercial project.
Develop a computational solution from scratch, substantially extend the capabilities of existing code, or build a model to analyse and interpret a substantial dataset.
Effectively communicate their work through written reports and defend it under critical questioning.
Who our students work with¶
The majority of our students work on external projects, and so far they have worked with nearly 150 companies and universities around the world. Internal projects are supervised by Imperial staff. External projects also have an IRP tutor from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering. See Supervision.
Why propose a project¶
An Imperial College London MSc student, trained in computational science, data science and machine learning, working on your project full time over the summer.
Real progress on your problem, with code and a report at the end.
A chance to get to know a potential future hire. Many partners have gone on to hire their IRP students.
Little effort to get started. You submit a short project description, we shortlist interested students, and you choose who to work with. Confidentiality and intellectual property arrangements are possible.
To get started, see Supervisor-proposed projects and the project requirements.
Where the IRP fits in the MSc curriculum
Figure 1:The IRP is the last module students do after the completion of taught modules.
In this section¶
Key dates and deadlines for the year, from project proposals to the vivas.
Roles and responsibilities, supervision requirements, additional supervisors and conflicts of interest.
What every project must include, topics by course, what is not allowed, working with others, and start and end dates.