Stream: Information and Knowledge Management
| The Master of Science in Computer Science comprises 120 credits. One part of the syllabus is fixed and is the same for all the students. The other part of the curriculum allows students to mould their choice of studies to their individual objectives, choosing from among several courses grouped in 4 thematic areas (streams) of computer science. Students may choose all their courses from a single stream, specializing in one thematic area, or they may choose from among different streams. The following levels of courses are available: intermediate (I), advanced (A) seminars (S). Students have to choose stream courses amounting to a total of 28 credits, only one of which may be a seminar. |
With the rapid evolution of the information society, facilitated by the emergence and explosion of digital information and electronic networks, there has been tremendous growth in the information and knowledge-related disciplines. At the same time, there has been a convergence of the activities of these disciplines in electronic information and a need for information professionals who span many fields or who are establishing new roles in information-intensive organizations. It is the latter need for transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary information and knowledge professionals, together with the specific research competences available at the Faculty of Computer Science, that led to the proposal of the stream on Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) within the Master of Science in Computer Science.
Aim
The ultimate goal of Information and Knowledge Management is information-seeking success, which occurs when a user gets the right information at the right place at the right time to the right extent at the right level, and to the right amount. Hence, it is essential to adapt the information system or sources to fit the environment of users and their information needs so as to achieve goals of maximum access, usability, efficiency, and effectiveness. Moreover, both explicit forms or information and implicit forms of knowledge need to be considered, and the stream in Information and Knowledge Management of the MSc in Computer Science focuses on these two aspects.
On the one hand, it provides the foundations for efficiently collecting, organizing, storing, indexing, integrating, retrieving, and sharing the explicit information assets of an organization. Such assets include traditional data stored in databases, semistructured data such as documents and webpages, and increasingly multimedia and hypermedia data such as technical diagrams, voice and sound recordings, images, photos, videos, etc. These aspects are covered by the courses on Foundations of Databases and Multimedia and Hypermedia Systems. Interested students who wish to integrate competences from other streams may also choose the course on XML and Semistructured Databases.
On the other hand, it concentrates on techniques, methods, and tools for representing, storing, and managing the implict knowledge assets of an organization. Implicit knowledge needs to be articulated and made explicit in order to be effectively used. It is typically partial, incomplete, or even inconsistent, once elicited, and appropriate representation and manipulation mechanisms that can take this into account are needed. These have been studied extensively in Knowledge Representation, one of the key disciplines of Artificial Intelligence. All formalism used to represent and manipulate knowledge (e.g., semantic networks and frames used in Artificial Intelligence, conceptual and object-oriented data models used in databases, UML class diagrams used in software engineering, RDF and OWL used in the emerging field of the Semantic Web), are ultimately based on logic. To allow not only users but also machines to manipulate specifications expressed in such formalism, and more in general in variants of logics, with the aim of deducing novel, implicit information from the one explicitly represented, requires the techniques and tools studied in Computational Logic.
Software systems for manipulating the various forms of information and knowledge become increasingly complex, powerful, and difficult to design, build, and maintain. These difficulties are enhanced even more by the fact that the information is often shared among heterogeneous, geographically distributed systems, and that the highest flexibility, e.g., through mobile systems, is required to access, use, and update it. Thus, appropriately managing the quality of the produced software is a key issues. Intelligent Agent technologies are becoming widely used conceptual and practical tools to model and build such complex systems.
Profile of the graduate
Students will graduate with the necessary skills needed to manage the complex information and knowledge assets of industries. Specifically, the program provides professionals with the foundations to the efficient representation, storage, and access of information and knowledge of complex forms. It also provides the professional skills required to engineer high-performance data and knowledge management systems, such as multimedia and hypermedia systems, mobile services, and agent-based technologies.
Course list
The following courses are available in the Information and Knowledge Management Stream:
| Course | Level | Period | Credits | Lecturer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Computational Linguistics | I | Sem 1, A | 4 | Raffaella Bernardi |
| Non-classical Logics | A | Sem 1, B | 4 | |
| Computational Logic | I | Sem 2, A | 4 | Pablo Filottrani |
| Digital Libraries | I | Sem 2, A | 4 | Vittorio Di Tommaso |
| Foundations of Databases | A | Sem 2, A | 4 | Werner Nutt |
| Knowledge Representation | I | Sem 2, A | 4 | Enrico Franconi |
| System Security | A | Sem 2, A | 4 | Sabrina De Capitani Di Vimercati |
| Distributed Databases | I | Sem 2, B | 4 | Thomas B. Hodel |
| Knowledge Bases and Databases | A | Sem 2, B | 4 | Enrico Franconi |
| Semantic Web Technologies | A | Sem 2, B | 4 | |
| XML and Semistructured Databases | I | Sem 2, B | 4 | Andrea Calì |
| Temporal and Spatial Databases | A | Sem 2, B | 4 | Johann Gamper |
The following basic courses are also available in the Information and Knowledge Management Stream. Such courses are intended mainly for students of the BSc in Applied Computer Science. However, MSc students that wish to take one of these courses can issue a request to the Faculty Council.
| Course | Level | Period | Credits | Lecturer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Formal Methods | B | Sem 1, A | 4 | Alessandro Artale |
| Introduction to Artificial Intelligence | B | Sem 1, B | 4 | Sergio Tessaris |
The following courses, offered within the European Masters Program in Language and Communication Technologies, are also part of the Information and Knowledge Management Stream.
| Course | Level | Semester | Credits | Lecturer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic Speech Recognition | A | Sem 1, A | 4 | Diego Giuliani |
| Cross-Language Information Technologies | A | Sem 1, A | 4 | Marcello Federico |
| Intelligent Interfaces | A | Sem 1, A | 4 | Massimo Zancanaro |
| Text Processing | A | Sem 1, A | 4 | Bernardo Magnini |