Nuno’s blog

As promised in my 1st semester retrospective, here is a retrospective of the 2nd semester (Spring Semester).

The second semester was consisted of three courses, two core courses and one free elective. I picked the following courses:

• Distributed Systems
• Network Security
• Secure Software Systems

You can take a look at the syllabus for each course here. I can’t tell for sure which semester was tougher, the 1st or this one. I guess this 2nd semester involved more work, but you are more used to it, so you can handle things better.

(more…)

A lot of people have been asking me for a retrospective of the Lisbon MSIT-IS (Masters in Information Technology - Information Security) program from Carnegie Mellon, so I decided to post here a review of the previous semester.

First of all, this is a Dual Program (MSIT-IS from CMU and Mestrado em Segurança Informatica from FCUL). The entire program is held at FCUL in Lisbon, although a lot of the courses are lectured from Carnegie Mellon. You also have the option to go to Pittsburgh for the Summer Semester to write your Thesis.

The program started the last week of August ‘08. The portuguese students were invited to go to Pittsburgh for an orientation session and for the first week of classes. There, we got familiar with the campus, school procedures and we had a taste of what is to be a student at CMU.

After that week we returned to Lisbon, where we attended classes in a high-tech classroom prepared for video-conferencing with Carnegie Mellon at FCUL. All remote classes were live and interactive. Students in Portugal could see students at CMU (and vice-versa), they could interrupt the class and ask questions, etc. The experience was quite pleasant and it’s pretty much like we were there.

(more…)

Today my life has changed… I’m moving into another chapter.