Erasmus Mundus Master in Data Mining and Knowledge Management

The DMKM Master is a high quality programme intended to train specialized researchers, professionals and managers able to extract hidden knowledge from information recorded in databases and the web.

Students will follow their study track in two different universities of the Consortium, one for the first year of the Master and the other for the second year.

Classes are taught in English and the whole course is composed of 18 modules of about sixty hours each and a internship to perform a Master’s thesis. The course runs over 4 semesters. The first semester is devoted to basic training, whereas the two following ones are dedicated to acquire two specialties among six available ones:

• E-Science
• Data Mining and Complex System Modeling and Application in Social Sciences
• Knowledge and Decision
• Statistical Modeling and Data Mining
• Semantic Web
• Relational Data Mining

The fourth semester is devoted to the elaboration of a dissertation thesis in either a laboratory or a company. The network of partnership agreements set with leading
laboratories and major companies where students may perform internships during the last semester will offer to holders of the EMMC degree in DMKM multiple employment opportunities in high-tech industry, business intelligence companies, banking & finance, or research and academic environments.

Language classes will also be provided to ensure that students integrate as well as possible in socio-cultural environment of the host country and to prepare for the mobility.

Students that have obtained 120 ECTS will automatically obtain national Master degrees from the countries in which they have studied.

Students can obtain a scholarship, donated to the Consortium by the European Commission. The amount of the scholarship for European students is 12500€ per year.

The sheer amount of numerical data, textual documents, images, video, Web sites available today is overwhelming, and cannot satisfy, per se, the emerging knowledge society. It is indeed necessary to extract, from this wealth of information, the knowledge hidden inside. Only this ability could guarantee a better future to the individuals and the society, as well as a sustainable economic development and competitiveness.

To locate useful information, to transform it into actionable knowledge, and to manage its use for decision-making can be accomplished through the exploitation of methodologies and tools of Data Mining and Knowledge Management (DMKM). Notwithstanding the availability on the market and in academic environments of advanced solutions and systems, DMKM still calls for further research and developments to face new important challenges. In particular, some hot issues are still to be tackled, such as the following ones:

• To face the exponential increase of data it is not sufficient to rely on larger storing devices and/or faster computers. New intelligent approaches are to be designed to tame the very size of data.


• Data assume different modalities, such as numbers, texts, audio-video, sensor signals, and so on. Integrating into a unique system such complex data is still a challenge. Also, spatial distribution of data (for instance, on several Web sites or different data bases) is a source of difficulty for integration.

More importantly, there is still a "semantic gap" between the form in which the data are represented and used by a computer and their "meaning" for a human user. The new emerging techniques for the Semantic Web are trying to close this gap.

Third countries students may apply to a category A scholarship (24,000 Euros per year), whereas European students may apply to a category B scholarship (11,500 Euros per year). European students, who send their 4-th semester in a third country, will receive an additional lump sum of 3,000 Euros (just one time, not every year).

In addition to the scholarships fundend by the EU, the Consortium adds the following ones:

• For Non European students: 5 scholarships, each of the amount of 10,000.00 € per year. This amount covers the 8,000.00 € to be payed to the Consortium as fees for ther Master, plus 2,000.00 € as contribution to travel. The grantee has only to provide the means of subsistence by him/herself.


• For European students: 5 scholarships, each of the amount of 5,000.00 € per year. This amount covers the 4,000.00 € to be payed to the Consortium as fees for ther Master, plus 1,000.00 € as contribution to travel. The grantee has only to provide the means of subsistence by him/herself.