Study Guide

Undergraduate program requirements

In order to obtain the Diploma in Computer Engineering and Informatics, students are required to attend and pass exams in 53 courses (compulsory and elective) and to successfully complete a Diploma Thesis. The required number of credits for obtaining the Diploma is 300 ECTS units, from which 270 correspond to courses and 30 to the Diploma Thesis. The normal duration of the program is 5 years (10 semesters). The curriculum is structured as follows:

 The first six semesters comprise a set of 35 courses, 30 of which are compulsory that teach the students general as well as more specific but fundamental topics and principles in Computer Engineering and Informatics. Several courses are of an intensive laboratory nature. Students also follow 1 elective course of this nature. In addition, the students must follow 1 course of English technical terminology, 1 course on good practices for technical writing and presentations that also discusses ethical issues for the profession, and 2 courses in General Education that are offered primarily by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. During the next 3 semesters (semesters 7, 8 and 9) students undertake courses that are designed to further and deepen their knowledge of the various areas of Computer Engineering and Informatics. They have to pass a total of 17 additional courses, 6 of which are compulsory and are offered in semesters 7 and 8 and the remaining ones are electives. During the 9th semester, all 6 courses are electives. Students have the option to replace at most 1 of these courses with a “Practical Training” course which is implemented as an internship. Specifically, at the beginning of the academic year, the Department examines and approves a number of internships offered to students by various entities (companies, non-profits, etc.) The duration is 3 months and if approved, can be used as stated above. The number of internships available is typically smaller than the number of students interested in the practical training elective, therefore students are selected based on their application and criteria that are clearly stated well in advance. During the tenth semester, students prepare, write and publicly defend a Diploma Thesis on a topic selected from a list advertised by the faculty earlier the same academic year. Each Diploma Thesis is prepared and written individually and is evaluated by a two-member committee, consisting of the Diploma Thesis Advisor and one more member of the faculty. The diploma theses are also presented collectively at a special poster session conducted several times a year (shortly before the graduation ceremonies). The Diploma Thesis is an opportunity for students to further their understanding of the field, to test and evaluate different designs, to apply their knowledge to concrete problems and to explore the state-of-the-art. The Diploma Thesis must be a full blown study surveying previous work on the selected topic, followed by design, development and implementation steps that demonstrate knowledge of the field and its principles and potential innovation.

The Program of Study of the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics seeks to provide the appropriate scientific and engineering background so that its graduates can participate and contribute in the study, design, development, theoretical analysis and building of software and hardware systems as well as in the study, research and development of theoretical approaches and designs that concern the principles of communication, computation, coordination, evaluation as well as the design and applications of computational objects and artifacts. In addition to their knowledge of the fundamentals of the field and the profession, the graduates of the Department also have the ability to participate in activities that cover the study, design, supervision and operation, evaluation, maintenance, expert reporting and quality assurance and standards certification in installations and applications of: computer systems, communication and network systems, information systems and their interconnections, software and algorithms for processing and analyzing big data and data distributed across networks, parallel computer systems, special purpose computing systems, artificial intelligence systems, problem solving environments, high performance scientific computing systems, etc.

Program details

The courses that a student has successfully passed after formal examinations and/or concession and/or exemption appear in the table below. The code of each course is unique. The course category is indicated by one or more of the following symbols: Υ (Compulsory), ΥΕ (Elective), ΓΠ (General Education), ΔΕ (Diploma Thesis), ΠΑ (Internship). Semester is a number indicating the semester that the course belongs to. Credit units represent the ECTS units corresponding to the course. Examination term is the examination period the course was successfully passed.

Courses

1. Grades correspond to a scale from 5 to 10 and are given in a denomination of down to half an integer unit.
2. The ECTS ranking for compulsory courses is based on a sample of at least 200 students participating in the exams during the current academic year. For the rest of the courses it is based on a sample of at least 100 students of current academic year. If the number of students is not adequate, statistical data involving the performances of students during up to the last five years are used for comparison. If yet there is not enough data for comparison, this field remains empty (as per instructions in relevant government documents).
3. The diploma thesis and the internship are considered personal work, so there is no correspondence in the ECTS ranking on the basis of a previous sample. In the same way, courses credited by concession have no correspondence either, except if there is such correspondence transferred from the institution of origin.
4. The final diploma grade is calculated as the weighted average sum (WAS) of the grades of the courses and the diploma thesis. The weights in WAS are related with the so called “teaching units” (TU) of each course. The TU can be computed directly from the ECTS units of each course except the diploma thesis by subtracting 1 from the ECTS, that is the TU for a course are equal to its ECTS units minus 1. Note that the relation is not symmetric, that is the ECTS units cannot be derived directly from the TU.  

5. ECTS ranking of the Diploma is based on the sample of the graduates of the last five (5) years, which exceeds 600 diploma holders.