The Ph.D. program allows outstanding students who want to change the face of computer science to work with world-class faculty in cutting-edge research. All Ph.D. students must have research interests in the areas supported by current faculty. All Ph.D. students must study full time and receive full financial support. Students start their research immediately with a faculty advisor. The major research interests of the faculty in the department are:
- Computer Security: privacy-preserving data mining, wireless network security, cryptography, phishing, botnets, and language-based security including information flow control.
- Computer Vision, Visualization, and Graphics: 3D shape from images, differential geometry methods, organizing unorganized point clouds, dynamic scene analysis, shape analysis and indexing.
- Software Engineering: high assurance, formal methods, trustworthy computing, software engineering education.
Program Requirements
This document states the requirements for CS doctoral students in addition to the requirements that apply to all doctoral students, as listed in the doctoral student handbook and catalog.
Breadth Requirement
Students must complete at least three graduate courses from the courses listed below with an A- and with at least one coming from each category. Additionally, students must pass a written exam in the subject of algorithms, which will be offered near the end of Fall and Spring semesters. The courses and exam must be completed by their 4th semester and students have a maximum of two attempts to pass the algorithms exam (similarly to the older written qualification exams).
Artificial Intelligence
- CS-532 3D Computer Vision
- CS-558 Computer Vision
- CS-559 Machine Learning: Fundamentals and Applications
- CS-541 Artificial Intelligence
- CS-598 Visual Information Retrieval
- CS-582 Causal Inference
Systems and Languages
- CS-516 Compiler Design
- CS-576 Secure Systems
- CS-677 Parallel Programming for Many-core Processors
- CS-549 Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing
- CS-522 Mobile Systems and Applications
- CS-510 Principles of Programming Languages
- CS-609 Data Management and Exploration on the Web
Research Seminars
PhD students are required to attend CS seminars and their attendance will be recorded. Students failing to meet this requirement may be put on probation at the discretion of the faculty.
Qualifying Exam
The qualifying exam is an oral examination on a syllabus consisting of research papers, prepared jointly by the student and a committee including the advisor and two tenure-track faculty members. The goal is to establish scholarship in an area of research. The exam needs to be completed by the end of the 4th semester. It consists of a presentation, followed by open-door questions from the audience and a closed-door examination from the committee. The committee can pass, fail, or request re-examination (either written or oral).
Thesis Proposal
Students must write and present a thesis proposal, where they lay out an intended course of research for their dissertation. The proposal should contain an explanation of the problem and why it is important, a sketch of the proposed solution, and background information that serves to indicate that the problem is unsolved and what prior or related approaches to this or similar problems have already been investigated. The written proposal must be distributed and read by a committee, comprising the persons that are expected to form the student’s dissertation defense committee. The presentation of the thesis proposal is open to the public and it is followed by open-door questions from the audience and committee and closed-door questions from the committee. The committee can pass, fail, or request additional material from the student.
Dissertation and Thesis Defense
The department follows the Stevens-wide procedures for the dissertation defense, including committee composition. The defense must be announced at least two weeks in advance on the cs-faculty and cs-phd-students mailing lists as well as a Stevens-wide announcement originating with the Registrar's office. At least one manuscript based on dissertation work must be published on peer-reviewed conference proceedings or journal, at the time of the dissertation defense, and the thesis document must be in the hands of the committee at least four weeks in advance. For more information please refer to the online catalog. The committee can ask major or minor revisions, or fail the student. If major revisions are requested, at least a month of time is required for the student to make the changes and submit an updated dissertation. The amount of time given to the student to make revisions will not exceed 9 months, unless there are extenuating circumstances.
Degree Requirements
You must earn 84 graduate credits to complete the doctoral program. Of these credits, 0 to 30 must be earned through course work, and 30 to 60 via research work. You may apply up to 30 credits from a master’s program toward your doctoral degree.
Within two years of your admission, you must take a written qualifying examination to test your comprehension of the fundamentals and of the field. After passing the qualifying examination you must take an oral preliminary examination to evaluate your aptitude for advanced research and your understanding of the subjects associated with your dissertation topics. Upon satisfactory completion of this oral examination, you become a doctoral candidate and start your dissertation research.
Doctoral research must be based on an original investigation, and the results must make a significant, state-of-the-art contribution to the field, worthy of publication in current professional literature. At the completion of the research, you must defend your thesis in a public presentation.
ACADEMIC CATALOG
