Master of Science in International Business Management

at Heriot-Watt University - Edinburgh Campus United Kingdom

Petroleum engineering is central to safe, efficient and sustainable development of oil and gas assets to meet global energy and resource demands.

Since its establishment in 1975, the Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering (IGE) at Heriot-Watt University has delivered its internationally renowned petroleum engineering MSc programme, providing thousands of graduates with the knowledge and skills to tackle the oil and gas industry’s most challenging problems across the globe. The programme offers an interdisciplinary approach to exploration and extraction of petroleum resources.

Programme content

The programme encompasses a wide range of applied petroleum engineering fundamentals, leading to development of a technically well-prepared graduate with a sound knowledge of the industry – through eight taught courses and two projects. During the field development project, students work together on real field data, considering the technical, economic and environmental aspects involved. For the individual research project, students select a specialist topic, for example related to geosciences, enhanced oil recovery, production chemistry or advanced drilling and completions, offered both by the Institute and by the industry.

Heriot-Watt Mechanical Engineering degrees are ranked 1st in Scotland and top 10 in the UK by the Guardian University Guide 2020. An industrial panel are involved to ensure the course content reflects the changing needs of industry and that our graduates have the knowledge and practical skills required to successfully gain employment.

Student teaching benefits from our strong industrial links, in particular the involvement of the industrial panel in the assessment of 4th year design projects, providing a realistic client scenario.

This exciting 2-year MSc programme is designed to kick-start your career as an actuary, preparing you to take a leading role in managing risk in financial institutions worldwide.

Entry to the actuarial profession is by a demanding series of examinations, but the rewards after qualifying are great. Students that enrol onto this programme will follow the syllabus of MSc Actuarial Science in their first year and the MSc Actuarial Management programme in their second.

Taking our MSc in Actuarial Science and Management is a great way to speed your progress to this most prestigious of careers - it's designed to take you almost all of the way to qualification.

In the first year of the BEng Engineering course you’ll have the chance to study a range of subjects. Beyond this, you’ll be able to focus on a particular area of expertise to work towards your Engineering degree.

From a wide choice of subjects, you’ll select eight courses to match your interests – usually choosing from two or three subject areas. On the BEng Engineering course, most students choose subjects in  Engineering.  All subjects include some form of industrial design,whether Mechanical, Electrical, Civil or Chemical Engineering.

Together with experienced industry advisors this course is brand new and fundamental to the modern petroleum industry.

The bulk of the world’s hydrocarbons come from producing assets – so-called 'mature fields'. In turn, these supply the bulk of the world’s energy.

Managing these assets is therefore a central aspect of global energy supply, and will become more so as the world’s giant fields become progressively more mature. Most industry jobs in exploration and production will be in this arena, requiring a talented workforce to fill them for decades to come.

Heriot-Watt's Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering has therefore created a new Master's programme to address this need.  The topical content is necessarily broader than the existing IPE programmes, embracing not only geoscience, reservoir and well engineering but also surface engineering and the linkage between them in the form of Integrated Asset Management (IAM).

The subject also demands a grasp of incremental petroleum economics and risk analysis, and a methodology for handling decision-making in assets in which production and data gathering are continuous.  This methodology provides the link between the programme components and sits at the core of the group exercise, with Edinburgh’s own Forth Bridge as a visual metaphor for the process.

Finally the programme deals with the asset end-game. When does production cease, how can field life be extended, how do we decommission (or then recommission?) and what are the potential uses of these reservoirs in the post-carbon era?

Software engineers create and maintain software applications using best practice from computer science, project management, engineering, application domains and other fields. This programme is designed to teach students how to apply state-of-the-art techniques and methodologies to develop high quality software to professional standards at an advanced level.

Students will be able to specialise in particular areas, such as the development of dependable systems, parallel or big data applications, advanced interactive systems like games, or novel applications using biologically inspired models of computing.

In some cases the project can be carried out in collaboration with an outside industrial or academic organisation.

Graduates from the programme can expect to find employment with software houses, IT companies, R+D divisions of companies, financial services organisations, defence contractors or government IT agencies and as researchers or research students within universities.

Our four year BSc Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) Honours degree is oriented to constructing robust and useable systems. We aim to teach people not just how to deploy cutting edge tools and techniques, but how to build the next generation of software tools that other system constructors will use. This course aims to give a well integrated balance of theoretical underpinnings and practical experience, strongly informed by the research expertise of our academic staff.

All Year 3 students take part in a year-long group project, where they co-operate in tackling a large, realistic problem. Year 4 students conduct a major, year-long, individual dissertation project.

The Artificial Intelligence specialism is gained through taking prescribed courses from the final year options (two of the following: Biologically Inspired Computation, Data Mining and Machine Learning, Intelligent Robotics) and having an approved AI topic for the final year project.

Data Scientist has been dubbed the 'sexiest job title' (Harvard Business Review, 2012) with IBM predicting a 28% growth of jobs by 2020. The UK government has set out their strategy for the UK to be a world leader in data science to enable the growth of the UK economy. Data Scientists require a combination of statistical analytical skills, the ability to process large volumes of data efficiently, c.f. Big Data, and then to generate visualisations to explain the results.

This two year programme offers an opportunity for graduates looking to transition to a new career path in Data Science, yet coming from a background outside Computing. Whether your experience lies in Science, Technology, Mathematics or the Arts, this pathway programme is a rare opportunity to become well-versed in the advanced, challenging field of Data Science.

A graduate from the Master of Mathematics (MMath) degree will be able to communicate to specialist and non-specialist audiences and unambiguously demonstrate the ability to work professionally with a considerable degree of autonomy. They will also be well equipped to continue independent study in mathematics (e.g. PhD study), should they wish to do so.

The MSc International Management and Business Communication with Human Resource Management programme concentrates on developing professional communication skills in business and HRM contexts, as well as an understanding of intercultural and international business and HRM issues.

The structure of the programme is designed to provide graduates with access to a range of professions and managerial careers within businesses engaged internationally, but in particular in the area of HRM.

Alongside the practical skills and knowledge acquired, students will also engage in independent research, providing a potential route to research training in cognate disciplines at a higher level.