A MAJOR industrial company has announced it is to provide £60,000-worth of sponsorship to fund a new course for the computer science engineers of the future at the University of York.

Crossrail, the company delivering the new railway for London and the south-east – Europe’s largest civil engineering project – is to give £60,000 annually for the Master of Engineering course in Embedded Systems. An embedded system is one designed to complete one or more functions.

Students on the course will get the chance to win one-year internships on the rail project, and will also have the chance to visit the company’s premises in London.

Crossrail will also be involved in the design of the course prospectus and will provide guest lecturers, as well as an annual prize of £250 for the outstanding student.

Valerie Todd, the company’s talent and resources director, said: “Crossrail is a project of national significance and has always valued investment in training future talent. The Master of Engineering course will help foster such talent by providing a high-quality learning environment creating a large bank of skilled engineers, who will be an asset to the industry.”

The four-year course offered by the university’s department of computer science aims to give students practical experience of hardware and software development and working with a major industrial collaborator.

An embedded systems laboratory in the new computer science building, currently under construction on the university’s Heslington East campus expansion, will be named The Crossrail Laboratory.

The agreement will see the establishment of an annual Crossrail public lecture which will feature speakers from the rail sector. The department will also explore the potential for research projects and workshops with Crossrail.

Professor John McDermid, the university’s head of computer science, said: “This is an exciting partnership with a company behind the transformation of transport infrastructure in one of the world’s great cities.

“Crossrail’s involvement will result in students with first-hand experience of working with embedded systems, and the technical and personal skills to be of immediate and long-term benefit to industry.”