The necessity of providing cross-disciplinarity in graduate-level embedded systems design education has been widely stressed and is by now generally accepted, even though usually limited to disciplines belonging to the ICT area in the large. Facing the challenges of interfacing the embedded systems with the "real" physical world is left - if at all - to work in final Master projects or in internships, and as a consequence is limited to one specific case of study.
The Mastering_NT (exposing Master Students to Nano-Tera innovation) educational experiment plans of extending the present teaching plan of the Master of Science in Embedded Systems Design offered by the Faculty of Informatics of USI and organized by the ALaRI institute by means of an advanced NT-related course structured around a number of specific, cutting-edge seminars held by experts coming from a number of Nano-Tera RTD projects. A relevant point is that the project will not be just a series of seminars but a proper integrated course. A small, agile Scientific Committee will identify the Nano-Tera RTD projects best suited for this experiment and invite the respective researchers to provide extended seminars (including both formal lectures and tutoring); the ALaRI staff will take care of granting that the necessary background material for each of the seminars be timely made available to the students and that the necessary support be provided. Finally, through course evaluation, students’ feedback, lecturers’ reactions, a conclusive analysis of the experiment will be drafted and made available to any interested party. At the same time, the Mastering_NT seminars will be open - even individually - not only to any student of USI that may be interested in them, but to the wider Swiss technical community, and in particular to that operating in Tessin, to provide a technology transfer action from Nano-Tera to such community.