Return to: School of Graduate Engineering and Applied Science: Degree Programs
The CpE Program offers a Ph.D. degree, the primary focus of which is a dissertation describing publishable quality research (directed by a faculty advisor) of significant depth. Students should consult the School of Engineering and Applied Science–Academic Rules section of the Record for school-level degree requirements that are additional to the following CpE Graduate Program requirements.
Requirements & Procedures for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree
The Ph.D. degree requires at least 24 hours of graded coursework. If the student earns a master’s degree en route, the student must then complete at least 9 graded hours of additional graduate-level coursework. A student is required to meet a set of degree coursework requirements, defined to include the architecture/design course requirement, Computer Science course requirements, and Electrical and Computer Engineering course requirements (see the Curriculum Distribution Requirements). For the courses meeting the requirements, a Ph.D. student must receive a minimum grade of A-.
Students desiring a PhD should take the qualifying examination as soon as possible. Students entering with a master’s degree should take the exam no later than the beginning of their third semester. Students entering with a bachelor’s degree should ideally take the exam by the beginning of their third semester, but no later than the beginning of the fourth semester. (The exam should not be postponed in order to finish a master’s degree first.) The objective of the qualifying examination is to assess the student’s potential to begin doctoral-level research. We have identified a set of six research areas from which each candidate will be required to select a primary research area and two secondary areas for the examination. The areas are: 1) Computer Architecture and High-Performance Computing; 2) VLSI, System on Chip; Low Power Design; 3) Distributed systems; Dependable and Secure computing; Software Engineering; 4) Cyber-physical systems; Embedded, Autonomous, Mobile and Robotic Systems; 5) Machine Learning; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Vision, Image and Signal Processing; and 6) Networks and Internet; Internet of Things; Cloud computing. Each student will select a primary and 2 secondary areas from a list of papers provided by the committee about two months before the exam. The student will submit a written report (maximum of 3 pages in IEEE standard format at http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/pubs/transactions/stylesheets.html) on the paper in the primary area to the head of the CpE qualifiers committee. The student will also prepare a 20-minute (max) presentation on the primary paper, and a 10-minute (max) presentation on each secondary paper summarizing their salient points, for delivery at the oral examination. Students will be evaluated on the combined written submission and oral examination. The result will be a clear-cut pass or fail for the entire exam; no remedial work will be allowed to alter the outcome. A student who does not pass the qualifying exam on the first try must retake it at the next offering. A student who fails the examination twice will lose financial support at the end of the semester and must leave the program at the end of that semester.
After a student has successfully passed the qualifying examination, the student should put together a Ph.D. Advisory Committee. For guidelines regarding the Advisory Committee, please see “Ph.D. Advisory Committee” in the School of Engineering and Applied Science—Academic Rules section of the Record. In addition to School requirements, CpE students must have at least one member from the ECE department and at least one member from the CS department. The home department of CpE students is defined as the advisor’s home department.
The student should prepare an acceptable dissertation proposal done under the guidance of the student’s advisor. This proposal should be presented before any extensive research is undertaken, in order to receive early faculty approval of the suitability of the proposed research. Successful completion of the dissertation proposal examination will result in elevation to candidacy for the degree. The assessment of the dissertation proposal is performed by the advisory committee at the time of the defense of the proposal. In the event that a suitable proposal is not presented but the faculty believes the student has sufficient research potential, another research presentation will be scheduled within 6 months. If a suitable proposal is still not presented, the student is subject to dismissal from the program.
At a minimum, all Ph.D. candidates are required to submit an advisor-approved article related to their research to a refereed journal or conference, prior to completing their dissertation defense. If the student’s advisor is not a co-author of the paper, the advisor must provide the CpE graduate committee with a note indicating the advisor’s approval of the paper.
The culmination of the PhD program is the defense of the dissertation. This dissertation will be the result of the final research outlined in the dissertation proposal. It is expected that the work be of sufficient quality to warrant journal publication. The dissertation defense, which is announced publicly, is an oral defense before the student’s Ph.D. dissertation defense committee as well as any other interested faculty, students or other persons. For guidelines regarding the Defense Committee, please see “Ph.D. Defense Committee” in the School of Engineering and Applied Science—Academic Rules section of the Record. In addition to School requirements, CpE students must have at least one member from the ECE department and at least one member from the CS department. The home department of CpE students is defined as the advisor’s home department. The student presentation portion should not exceed 45 minutes. CpE students must distribute the written dissertation to committee members a minimum of two weeks prior to the defense.
Curriculum Distribution Requirements
Every graduate student in the Computer Engineering Graduate Program must successfully complete 24 credits of graded course work for the PhD including:
- One of the following courses:
- CS 6354 Computer Architecture
- ECE 6435 Computer Architecture and Design
- At least 9 graded course credits from CS (may include CS 6534).
- At least 9 graded course credits from ECE (may include ECE 6435).
- Of the 30 credits of graded coursework, at least 18 must be CS/CPE/ECE courses with the following restrictions:
- No more than 3 graded credits of independent study, no more than 3 graded credits of supervised project research.
- No more than 9 credits at the 5000-level of which no more than 6 credits may be from any one department. Only 5000-level courses offered in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Data Science may be used.
