page_title: Università della Svizzera italiana
section_title: Informatics
hierarchical_section_title: Università della Svizzera italiana / Organisation and research areas / Informatics
caption_attribution_description: Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, Switzerland); Faculty of Informatics
context_page_description: The Università della Svizzera italiana, sometimes referred to as the University of Lugano, in English-speaking contexts, is a public Swiss university established in 1995, with campuses in Lugano, Mendrisio and Bellinzona. USI is the only university in Switzerland where the official language is Italian. It counts four Faculties at the Lugano campus, and the Academy of Architecture at the Mendrisio campus. Affiliated to USI, since 2010, are the Institute for Research in Biomedicine and, from 2017, the Institute of Oncology Research, both located in the Bellinzona. As of 2019, USI is ranked 301-350 in the THE World University Rankings 2020. As of 2020 is ranked 273° in the 2020-2021 QS World University Rankings.
  In other university rankings, USI ranked 54th in the 2020-2021 "Young University Rankings" of Times Higher Education World University Rankings, where universities with less than 50 years of activity are ranked.
context_section_description: The Faculty of Informatics was founded by Mehdi Jazayeri and established in 2004. The current dean is Professor Antonio Carzaniga. It is ranked first in Europe for software engineering, according to CSrankings.
  First year students cover mathematical topics, computer architecture, networking, and fundamental concepts of programming. A further course persists throughout the 3-year undergraduate curriculum.
  Students are expected to learn about a wide variety of topics, from big O notation and calculus, through networking protocols and layers, to computer architecture. A variety of programming languages are used. Programming is introduced through Scheme and functional programming throughout the first semester, in parallel with the computer architecture course (which uses MIPS assembly). Later on, C, Java, and JavaScript are used. The curriculum puts a strong emphasis on teamwork, with a major group project happening at the end of every semester.
  Master topics include Software Design, Software Architecture, Dependable Distributed Systems, Embedded System Design (see ALaRI), Intelligent Systems (with IDSIA), Applied Informatics.
  The Institute of Computational Science (ICS), a research unit of the Faculty, was founded in 2008 and is directed by Professor Rolf Krause. The Institute is the result of the vision of USI to become a new scientific and educational centre for Computational Science in Switzerland. The Institute offers research and teaching in Mathematical Modeling, Numerical Simulation, and High Performance Computing. The ICS hosts seven research groups which focus on advanced computing in computational science, high-performance methods for numerical simulation in science, medicine and engineering, computational time series analysis, computational shape analysis, multiscale and multiphysics models in computational biology, computational modeling of cardiac electrophysiology, and the simulation of biological and physical systems. The Computational Science Master of Science graduate program at the ICS emphasizes a mathematical and methodological framework as well as an application-oriented education in Informatics and Software Engineering.
caption: Building of the Faculty of Informatics
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