The University of Edinburgh is offering the world's first postgraduate degree program in e-Science. Students will study the principles of distributed computing underlying e-Science and the Grid, as well as gaining practical experience in using current Web and Grid services technologies. The degree will prepare them for a career in academia or the commercial IT sector.

Students can take two semesters of taught courses for a postgraduate diploma, or supplement that with an individual research project applying their knowledge to a real e-Science problem to obtain an MSc degree. The program is taught by academics from Edinburgh's Schools of Physics and Informatics, as well as staff from the Edinburgh-based UK National e-Science Center (NeSC), which is one of the world's leading centers for e-Science and Grid computing.

Program director Robert Mann, said: "We take a broad view of e-Science in Edinburgh. The same Grid computing infrastructure can support research across a wide range of scientific disciplines, and we have seen a vibrant multi- disciplinary e-Science research community develop around NeSC. Our Masters program is equally well suited to scientists who want to learn additional IT skills to support their future research careers as it is to computer science students who want to work for one of the big software companies -- such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun -- who are currently investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Grid computing. We're very excited that a number of major companies are interested in project placements for our students."

The program will admit its first students in September, and places are still available for computer science graduates or students from a scientific discipline with a proven aptitude for programming.

For further information, see www.ph.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/degrees/msc_escience.html.