Georgian Mihaila, R&D engineer at Orange Labs

Driven by the question "How does it work?", I went from the electrical engineering side of telecommunications to computer science. Throughout my time at UCL, the NCS programme not only answered all of my questions, but introduced new ones which I carried on investigating either during my day job or my spare time. I must say I was pleasantly surprized when I have encountered the numerous systems and concepts studied during the MSc in real world deployments and actively discussed by fellow colleagues from accross the IT industry.

Keep your mind opened, hold on tight throughout the ride and you will not be dissapointed, beacause whatever you carry on doing afterwards, know that you will have the right tools to move forward.

Adedayo Adetoye - MSc DCNDS (Previous name of MSc NCS programme)

"Coming to UCL for the MSc DCNDS programme was one of the smartest decisions I have made concerning my career. Naturally, given the excellent reputation of the school and the programme, I had very high expectations. The course more than met my expectations and gave me the very solid technical background I needed to continue towards a PhD degree in Computer Science. Not surprisingly, my current research is on mobile code security, a reflection of the knowledge gained from networking, security and distributed systems taught in the course. The content is a comprehensive mix of topics in computer science and engineering, it takes a holistic view to solving pressing engineering problems: a quality that is in high demand both in the industry and the research community. The teaching staff are excellent, professional and quite friendly too. I am very satisfied that I took the programme and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to make an impact in this field of computing. "

Melissa Ho - MSc DCNDS (Previous name of MSc NCS programme)

"The DCNDS programme gave me the foundations and experience I needed in research - while enabling me to discover how much I love it. My final project was to extend and evaluate and epidemic routing algorithm for partially-connected ad hoc networks. This research project gave me the opportunity to innovate and to apply skills learned in our classes - how reason about networking and communications technology. However, the most valuable resource is the encouragement and mentorship given by the teaching staff. It is an intense course, but well worth the effort. Currently I am aiming to continue research by pursuing admission into PhD programmes in the United States. "

Clovis Chapman - MSc DCNDS (Previous name of MSc NCS programme)

"Having developed a strong interest in distributed systems during the 3 years of my undergraduate degree course in Computer Science at King’s College, I came to UCL in 2001 to undertake the MSc in DCNDS. While the courses were very interesting and provided me with good ground knowledge, the final group project was a particularly enthralling experience that put me on the path I am following today. Our project was in the area of peer-to-peer and Grid systems, and our group poured a lot of hard work into developing a system from the ground up over several months, whilst applying project management techniques and knowledge gained during the year.
Since then I have remained in UCL and am currently working as a Research Fellow and undertaking a PhD part-time in the area of Grid middleware. "