Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (Sustainable Mobility Analytics)
The programme on Sustainable Mobility Analytics is organized in collaboration with the EIT Urban Mobility Master School. It integrates entrepreneurship & innovation throughout the coursework and has been launched to train our future innovators and change makers in urban transport and mobility. The track is a double degree programme; you will spend one year each at two different universities to be chosen from UGent, TU/e Eindhoven, UPC Barcelona, POLIMI Milano and University of Tartu. Graduating students will be awarded two master’s degrees, one from each university where they carried out their studies. Moreover, the programme is designed so that students attain a certificate awarded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology [EIT].
What
This Master programme combines the core disciplines of Industrial Engineering and Operational Research. Industrial Engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with analysing, designing and optimising complex operational systems. The set of the mathematical tools these engineers rely on for designing operational systems is known under the term Operations Research.
Sustainable Mobility Analytics aims to improve urban mobility in our cities and around the world. This requires not only the improvement of transport infrastructure but also a system approach towards a better planning, execution and operation. Today, new data coming from smartphones or intelligent transport systems are becoming available. As we continue to urbanize and gather more data about our mobility patterns and urban systems, the challenge is not simply the amount of data, but how we manage it, critically understand its quality, and utilize it for decision support on cities’ most pressing challenges. There is an expanding need to forge a new generation of engineers, capable of analyzing complex flows and relations in an urban environment and extracting meaningful insights. Such work is critical to support cities’ strategic decisions and push towards a more sustainable future, centered on efficient resource use, a clean environment, equitable citizen engagement, and a healthy, low-carbon society. The Sustainable Mobility Analytics programme is designed in an interdisciplinary fashion to analyze, start and manage new and emerging transport and mobility technologies and services for citizens and logistics.
Remarks
Note: students need to submit two parallel applications, both at UGent and at the EIT Urban Mobility Master School. Only students accepted for both applications, will receive a letter of admission for this programme.
For whom
The programme on Sustainable Mobility Analytics is organized in collaboration with the EIT Urban Mobility Master School. It integrates entrepreneurship & innovation throughout the coursework and has been launched to train our future innovators and change makers in urban transport and mobility.
Structure
The track is a double degree program. You will spend one year each at two different universities - the “entry” university (first master year) and the “exit” university (second master year). All choices are located at a leading university in Europe in the field of urban mobility: UGent, TU/e Eindhoven, UPC Barcelona, POLIMI Milano and University of Tartu. Graduating students will be awarded two master’s degrees, one from each university where they carried out their studies. Moreover, the programme is designed so that students attain a certificate awarded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.
The programme consists of a general module, main subject modules, elective courses, and a master dissertation. The track has integrated technical content and business content (on Innovation & Entrepreneurship). The general module contains 30 credits of courses that cover the core competences of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. The main subject modules cover 30 credits of specialist courses in the domain of Sustainable Mobility Analytics. Through 30 credits of elective courses, students can further deepen and/or broaden their knowledge and skills in technical and non-technical subjects. In the Master Dissertation, students perform academic research in close collaboration with a company or organisation in transport or mobility.
Between the first and second year, students will participate in a Summer School applying new skills to two different cities within Europe, with all students active in the EIT Urban Mobility Master School.
Labour Market
You will have a wide range of career opportunities, within the public and private sector, as well as the business know-how to start your own business or conduct rigorous research.
Quality Assurance
At Ghent University, we strive to educate people who dare to think about the challenges of tomorrow. For that purpose, we provide education that is embedded in six strategic objectives: Think Broadly, Keep Researching, Cultivate Talent, Contribute, Extend Horizons, Opt for Quality.
Ghent University continuously focuses on quality assurance and quality culture. The Ghent University's quality assurance system offers information on each study programme’s unique selling points, and on its strengths and weaknesses with regard to quality assurance.
More information:
Unique Selling Points
- This is a broad engineering programme in which various aspects that are important in a business context are combined, i.e., scientific, technological, economical, organisational, and human factors. This master’s engineers are excellently prepared to face concrete challenges, to solve problems, and to take the lead in companies and organisations to strive for “operational excellence”.
- This engineering profile is much wanted in the business world resulting in many job opportunities in very diverse companies and sectors. The programme is also much appreciated by the students themselves.
- The programme strikes a balance between academic, research-related competences and professional, hands-on competences. Most teachers have close contacts with the business world, through their experience in national and international projects in cooperation with industry and/or based on their affiliation with e.g. Flanders Make or imec. During their classes and assignments, they share both their hands-on experience and their relevant research findings.
- Students have a certain freedom of choice to compose their study programme according to their interests. They can choose to subscribe to a mix of technical, managerial and social elective course units; they can select the subject of their master’s dissertation; and they can opt to subscribe to an (international) apprenticeship.
- Student association ORLean joins the students in various extracurricular activities, such as company visits, meetings with alumni, talks from industry representatives, etc. and helps the students to establish networks in doing so.
Strengths
- In many course units assignments and group works are offered in which the theory needs to be tested by and applied in practical cases, which provides the students immediately with relevant business experience.
- The programme takes actively part in the development of new, activating methods in which classical lectures make way for methods in which the students seize the initiative. Various course units are switching over to forms of blended learning and online learning combined with Q&A, independent project work, and feedback sessions.
- Students become acquainted with state-of-the-art software tools and packages for various applications, such as data processing and management, optimisation, statistics, simulation, automatization and operations management (ERP).
- In addition to the formal student representation in the study Programme Committee, the students are also unofficially consulted to keep our fingers on the pulse. This decreases the distance between students and teachers, which facilitates the quick and open discussion of possible problems.
- The programme’s development and implementation is evaluated by the business world by means of the advisory board, whose members hold key positions in both large cooperations and innovative SMEs across different industries and application domains.
Weaknesses
- We are attending to a better distribution of the project work across the different course units of the programme to avoid that many deadlines coincide or that too little time is left for certain courses (without project work).
- Many students conduct their master’s dissertations in a business context and gain their first hands-on experience that way, which is in theory a positive trend. However, in some cases this is at the expense of the scientific, academic quality of the work produced. We will keep a closer watch on this topic during the monitoring and evaluation.
- Since the IEOR master still has no specific preparatory bachelor programme, students are still insufficiently acquainted with the programme. That is why we intend to draw both students’ and companies’ attention by the programme’s profile and familiarity by means of a prominent presence on various information sessions and graduate fairs. In addition to these measures, we also strive to organise our own bachelor programme in due course.
Tailored coaching programme: As stipulated in the quality improvement plan, the study programme in liaison with the faculty and the Education Department, is set to eliminate the weaknesses within a reasonable time frame. The study programme delivers regular progress reports to the Education Quality Board.
This study programme is accredited by the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (Dutch: NVAO). Accreditation was extended following the positive outcome of the institutional review in 2022. Programme quality was validated by a quality review, i.e. a screening of the Education Monitor by the Education Quality Board. The Quality Assurance Resolution (in Dutch) can be found here.
This information was last updated on 14/02/2023.
In case of questions or suggestions with regard to the publicly available information, please contact the study programme.