Professional Development Courses for Graduate Students

At SUTD, we are committed to providing opportunities for graduate students to learn skills/knowledge that are complementary to their specialisations, so as to enable them to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Supporting SUTD’s vision of nurturing technically-grounded leaders, the suite of Professional Development Courses enables students to be adaptable to the environment and uncover their abilities as individuals, better preparing their transition from University to career by enhancing the necessary skills for success.

These Professional Development Courses* will be supplementary in nature, providing breadth beyond engineering and technology modules. Course structure and credits will be construed accordingly to the requirements of different programmes.

*These courses are subject to change. Please refer to more details during each enrolment exercise.

Credit-bearing Courses (3-credits)

  • Entrepreneurship
    • This practical oriented course covers the essence of Entrepreneurship, taking into consideration on participants having business or product ideas, turning them into reality and the process of growing a business.
  • Intellectual Property (IP) Clinic
    • Intellectual Property (IP) management is an essential business growth strategy. Inventions, literary and artistic works, designs and symbols, names and images are examples of IPs and are protected by the law through patents, copyrights and trademarks. This course covers the fundamentals of IP, how you can protect your ideas and invention and why it is an essential part of a business growth strategy.
  • Introduction to Machine Learning using Python
    • This course introduces learners to basic concepts of machine learning and data analytics. It focuses on data visualisation and two supervised machine learning algorithms for continuous data and categorical data, namely linear regression and logistic regression for classification. Metrics to evaluate the machine learning models will also be discussed. Students are expected to be familiar with Python or have prior knowledge to any first programming language.
  • Leadership & Organisational Management
    • The Leadership and Organisational Management course aims to provide students with a broad picture about "how to become an effective leader in an organisation". In this global exchange programme, there is extra emphasis on understanding global leadership and cross-cultural management and will cover important issues such as how to manage power and influence, how to build your team, how to lead your team through changes and challenges, and how to become a strategic leader.
  • Leadership with EQ
    • This highly interactive course equips students with essential soft and life skills, focusing on exploring relationship between Leadership and Emotional Intelligence, as well as to prepare students within a leadership role.
  • Presentation with Impact and Public Speaking
    • This course covers the essentials of good presentation and public speaking, and techniques to design compelling presentations and speeches. Walk away with skills to plan and deliver presentations and speeches with more confidence and greater impact.
  • Scientific and Grant Writing
    • This course covers the essence of scientific and grant writing that is relevant to research writing and the writing of grant proposals. The Scientific Writing component aims to identify and articulate the differences between efficient and deficient scientific writing. The Grant Writing component is an introductory course which covers typical and specific grant calls. It also covers the process of grant preparation, evaluation and writing.
  • Selected Aspects of Artificial Intelligence
    • The term Artificial Intelligence is largely equated with deep learning or the application of machine learning methods in general. In addition, the presence of mass data is often postulated as a necessity for a successful Artificial Intelligence-application. This course aims to explore alternatives to this understanding and provides an opportunity to look into other types of Artificial Intelligence besides data intensity.

Enrichment Workshops (Non Credit-bearing)

  • Effective Written Communication
    • This programme aims to equip participants with the practical skills and techniques of business writing. This will be a hands-on, customised course for SUTD’s graduate students with varying competencies in business writing.
  • Networking & Relationship Building for Success
    • This highly practical workshop will introduce tips and techniques to increase your confidence so that you can enjoy networking and do it more successfully.
  • The Responsible Conduct of Research – Protecting Scientific Integrity
    • This workshop is to provide the participants the knowledge on the rules, principles and values of the responsible conduct of research and the skills to recognise questionable scientific practice and misconduct. The participants will learn to develop solutions for difficult situations in the process of science and receive advice on how to protect their scientific work.


For enquiries, please contact pdcourses@sutd.edu.sg.