High Performance Computing, Master of Science (2 yrs), autumn 2026

The structure of the programme can be found here.

The programme has three specialisations:

• chemistry
• physics
• computer science
  

On the application form, applicants are asked to state their preferred specialisation(s) based on their previous educational background, interests, and career plans. However, the final decision on the specialisation will be made by the programme committee.

Graduates will have the opportunity to apply for doctoral studies. The duration of a doctoral programme is approximately four years of full-time study, and the studies include courses related to the programme and a doctoral dissertation.

There is a growing local, national, and international need in the labour market for specialists holding a degree in the area of data science. Computational methods and tools in natural sciences and technology are crucial for new innovations, products, and processes.

Finland and the IT Center for Science (CSC) host one of the world’s most efficient and ecological supercomputers, LUMI EuroHPC. Locally, there is a significant cluster of large-scale industrial and knowledge-intensive business and analytics process industries in Central Finland and around Jyväskylä, whose core competencies rely on the computational skills of their staff.

The programme educates experts skilled in driving HPC adoption and knowledge transfer in industry and academia in different strategic domains, making an essential contribution to joint industry-academia R&D efforts.

Possible job titles for graduates of this programme include computer scientist, data scientist, data analyst, software engineer, computational chemist, computational physicist, HPC developer, business analyst (HPC), and HPC system administrator.

The programme collaborates with

• CSC, Finland provides training and access to LUMI supercomputer with a multitude of possibilities for personalised studies and peer collaboration, e.g., via hackathons.
• Kajaani Supercomputer Centre and Kajaani University of Applied Sciences provide basic information on HPC infrastructures, especially on LUMI.
• KTH Royal Institute of Technology/PDC Center for High-Performance Computing, Sweden, offer HPC summer school annually in August. PDC also hosts Sweden’s supercomputer Dardel.
• VTT Processes, Jyväskylä, with their paper and energy industry-related simulation environments, provide feedback on industrial relevance and networking, and is a possible location for internships and thesis work.
• Regional Council of Central Finland and major process industry and big data analytics companies established in Central Finland
• Jyväskylä Summer School organised annually in August provides special courses on relevant topics that can be included in your degree.
• FCCI is the Finnish national computing infrastructure that manages and provides access from JYU to other universities’ computing infrastructures, which allows the students of the programme to obtain a more versatile understanding of the relevant computing systems and their architectures.

The faculty staff is very international in both faculties, including research staff, PhD students, and teachers from around the world, with roughly 30% of the staff coming from abroad. We also have very active collaboration with our international partners. Students will have the opportunity to study in a highly international environment, gaining an excellent foundation for their future careers.

Internationalisation at home, short-term mobility, and internships abroad are highly recommended during the studies.

The programme is based on the state-of-the-art research conducted in the Faculty of Information Technology and at the Department of Physics and the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. In the Faculty of Information Technology, new computational methods and their efficient implementations on high-performance and quantum computing platforms are addressed, together with the encapsulation of these methods and their production into libraries and efficient software development methods. The research in the Department of Physics covers properties of matter on the full scale from quarks to nanomaterials, with a heavy focus on numerical modelling and simulation. The Department of Chemistry has a strong research tradition in computational chemistry, surface and catalysis, computational biophysics, as well as theoretical spectroscopy, all of which will provide ample opportunities for MSc research projects.

Faculty staff is in close research collaboration with the IT Center for Science (CSC), the home to the LUMI supercomputer with a multitude of opportunities for the students and staff alike.

The aim of the master’s thesis (30 ECTS) and the thesis seminar is to familiarise students with scientific thinking and ways of working and enable them to complete a research project and report it following relevant scientific procedures. Quite often, the master’s thesis work is part of a larger research topic and the majority of the work is done within research groups in the departments and faculties. The thesis may also be completed in collaboration with industry.