Computer Science, M.S.

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DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE DEGREES

MASTER’S DEGREES - M.S.

Master of Science (M.S.) degree: A student completes coursework and conducts independent research overseen by a professor. The Master of Science requires a written thesis and oral defense; the level of research effort is commensurate with two (2) typical academic courses.

Note: If a student selects an M.S. degree, their research advisor is also the academic advisor.

M.S. DEGREE GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

An M.S. degree requires a minimum of 31 graded, graduate-level credits. Courses taken in CS must be 6000 or above to fulfill this requirement. 6 credits of non-CS 5000 level courses may be used to count towards the MS degree. Courses must be approved by the advisor and the Master’s Program Graduate Director (MGPD).

A graded credit means that the course resulted in a letter grade (A, B, C…) as opposed to an audited course (AU), a pass/fail or credit/no credit course (CR/NC). 

No grade lower than a “B” will be accepted towards satisfying the M.S. degree requirements. While a course with a passing grade lower than B will count in toward the GPA, it will not count toward degree requirements. 

M.S. DEGREE – 31 credits

1 credit of CS 6190 (Computer Science Perspectives)

12 credits of graded, graduate-level CS breadth electives comprised of a minimum of 3 credits (graduate-level 6000 and above) in any four of the six breadth areas listed below.

12 credits of graded, graduate-level CS electives (graduate-level 6000 and above) or other graduate courses approved by the advisor and the MGPD

6 credits of CS 8999 Thesis must be taken with the research advisor (3 credits in each of two semesters). These 6 credits reflect the execution, writing, and presentation of the Master’s thesis. CS 7995 (Supervised Project Research) cannot be used.

Engineering Thesis & Dissertation Assessment form

M.S. RESEARCH

The research activity requires a written thesis and oral presentation. While the exact content of the thesis is under the control of the advisor, a CS M.S. thesis typically includes an identification of a problem, commentary on why the problem is of importance, a review of the state of the art, a hypothesis regarding the expected outcome of the research, how the research was accomplished, what research results were obtained, an explanation of whether the original hypothesis was or was not verified, summary/conclusions, and topics for future research. 

The assessment of the student’s M.S. degree is based upon a written thesis and an oral defense.

M.S. THESIS COMMITTEE

Students should consult “Committee Requirements” in the School of Engineering and Applied Science—Academic Rules section. The policies detailed here complement the SEAS Requirements and clarify their applications to Computer Science.

The CS MS thesis committee must include the thesis advisor, who must be CS faculty and supervises the student for CS 8999 (Thesis). For the MS thesis committee, CS faculty are defined as UVA faculty with a primary, secondary, or courtesy appointment in CS. Note that this definition may differ from the definition of CS faculty for PhD committees.

TRANSFER CREDITS

Students should consult “Transfer Credits” in the School of Engineering and Applied Science—Academic Rules section of the Record for information about transferring courses toward their graduate degree.  Whether any individual transfer course counts toward CS master’s degree requirements is determined by the MGPD.

BREADTH AREAS and COURSES (6000 level and above)

1. Cyber Physical Systems, Internet of Things, Embedded Systems

CS 6465 - Human-Robot Interaction Credits: 3
CS 6501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Principles of Modeling for CPS (Behl)

Approved Topic: Internet of Trillions of Things (Stankovic)

Approved Topic: Mobile and IoT Security (Tian)

Approved Topic: IoT Sensors and Systems (Campbell)

Approved Topic: Autonomous and Mobile Robots (Bezzo)

Approved Topic: Engineering Interactive Technologies (Heo)

Approved Topic: Human-Computer Interaction (Heo)

Approved Topic: Communication, Test-Beds & Policy (Campbell)

Approved Topic: Advanced Embedded Computing Systems (Alemzadeh)

Approved Topic: Smart and Healthy Buildings (Campbell)

Approved Topic: Computational Behavior Modeling (Doryab)

Approved Topic: Learning for Interactive Robots (Kuo)

Approved Topic: Learning in Robotics (Behl)

Approved Topic: Wireless Sensing for Internet of Things (Qian)

Approved Topic: Multi-Robot Navigation (Chandra)
CS 6762 - Signal Processing, Machine Learning and Control Credits: 3
CS 6763 - Cyber-Physical Systems: Formal Methods, Safety and Security Credits: 3
CS 6780 - Cyber-Physical Systems Technology and Ethics Credits: 3
CS 8501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Cyber Physical Systems and the Internet of Things

2. Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Text Mining, Data Mining

CS 6316 - Machine Learning Credits: 3
CS 6501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Deep Learning for Visual Recognition (Ordonez-Roman)

Approved Topic: Learning Theory (Diochnos)

Approved Topic: Statistical Learning and Graphical Models (Hassanzadeh)

Approved Topic: Tensors for Data Science (Sidiropoulos)

Approved Topic: Natural Language Processing (Ji, Meng)

Approved Topic: Data Mining - Principles and Algorithms (Zhang)

Approved Topic: Mining Text Data for Knowledge Discovery (Wang)

Approved Topic: Reinforcement Learning (Wang, Wei)

Approved Topic: Vision & Language (Ordonez-Roman)

Approved Topic: Topics at the Interface of Learning and Game Theory (Xu)

Approved Topic: Information Retrieval (Wang)

Approved Topic: Geometry of Data (Fletcher)

Approved Topic: Digital Image Processing (Zhang)

Approved Topic: AI for Social Good (Doryab)

Approved Topic: Machine Learning in Image Analysis (Zhang)

Approved Topic: Interpretable Machine Learning (Ji)

Approved Topic: Learning in Robotics (Behl)

Approved Topic: Topics in Reinforcement Learning (Zhang)

Approved Topic: Digital Signal Processing (Fletcher)

Approved Topic: Program Analysis for ML and ML for Prog Analysis (Elbaum)

Approved Topic: Learning for Interactive Robots (Kuo)

Approved Topic: Risks and Benefits of Generative AI and LLMs (Evans, Qi)

Approved Topic: Responsible AI: Privacy, Fairness, and Robustness (Fioretto)

Approved Topic: Probabilistic Machine Learning (Farnoud)

Approved Topic: 3D Computer Vision (Cheng)

Approved Topic: Graph Machine Learning (Chen)

Approved Topic: Machine Learning for Software Reliability (Wang)

Approved Topic: Neural Networks (Daneshmand)

Approved Topic: Analyzing Online Behavior for Public Health (Kautz)

Approved Topic: Machine Learning on Graphs (Li)

Approved Topic: Graph Mining (Li)
CS 6762 - Signal Processing, Machine Learning and Control Credits: 3
CS 8501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Advanced Natural Language Processing

Approved Topic: Advanced Topics in Deep Learning

Approved Topic: Advanced Topics in Machine Learning

3. Security, Privacy, Cryptography

CS 6222 - Introduction to Cryptography Credits: 3
CS 6434 - Dependable Computing Systems Credits: 3
CS 6501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Software Security via Program Analysis (Kwon)

Approved Topic: Cryptography (Mahmoody)

Approved Topic: Software Security (Kwon)

Approved Topic: Defense Against the Dark Arts (Davidson)

Approved Topic: Advanced Topics in Cryptography (Wu)

Approved Topic: Cyber Forensics: Automated Software Approaches (Kwon)

Approved Topic: Hardware Security (Venkat)

Approved Topic: Network Security and Privacy (Sun)

Approved Topic: Computer Security: Attacks and Defenses (Davidson)

Approved Topic: Data Privacy (T. Wang)

Approved Topic: Threat Detection and Response (Ul Hassan)

Approved Topic: Responsible AI: Privacy, Fairness, and Robustness (Fioretto)

Approved Topic: Risks and Benefits of Generative AI and LLMs (Evans, Qi)

Approved Topic: Economics of Distributed Systems (Ferreira)

Approved Topic: Software Security Testing (Davidson)

Approved Topic: Machine Learning in Systems Security (Ul Hassan)
CS 8501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: IoT Security and Privacy

4. Theory and Algorithms

CS 6160 - Theory of Computation Credits: 3
CS 6161 - Design and Analysis of Algorithms Credits: 3
CS 6501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Convex Optimization for Engineering and Data Science (Li)

Approved Topic: Topics at the Interface of Learning and Game Theory (Xu)

Approved Topic: Software Logic (Sullivan)

Approved Topic: Geometry of Data (Fletcher)

Approved Topic: Computational Genomics (Sheffield/Zang)

Approved Topic: Learning in Robotics (Behl)

Approved Topic: Economics of Distributed Systems (Ferreira)

Approved Topic: Machine Learning for Software Reliability (Wang)
CS 8501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Neural Network Verification

5. Computer Systems

CS 6111 - Cloud Computing Credits: 3
CS 6354 - Computer Architecture Credits: 3
CS 6434 - Dependable Computing Systems Credits: 3
CS 6456 - Operating Systems Credits: 3
CS 6501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Data-Centric System Design (Khan)

Approved Topic: Learning and Prediction in Architecture (Khan)

Approved Topic: Hardware Security (Venkat)

Approved Topic: Computer Networks (Sun)

Approved Topic: Network Security and Privacy (Sun)

Approved Topic: Advanced Embedded Computing Systems (Alemzadeh)

Approved Topic: Computer Architecture: Hardware Accelerators (Skadron)

Approved Topic: Software-Defined Networking and Prog Networks (Kim)

Approved Topic: Cloud System Reliability (Lou)

Approved Topic: Modern Computing Architectures (Jog)

Approved Topic: GPU Architectures (Jog)

Approved Topic: CPU/GPU Memory Systems and Near-Data Processing (Skadron)
CS 7457 - Computer Networks Credits: 3

6. Software Engineering

CS 6501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Analysis of Software Artifacts (Elbaum)

Approved Topic: Software Engineering for Robotics (Elbaum)

Approved Topic: Cyber Forensics: Automated Software Approaches (Kwon)

Approved Topic: Software Logic (Sullivan)

Approved Topic: Program Analysis for ML and ML for Prog Analysis (Elbaum)

Approved Topic: Cloud System Reliability (Lou)

Approved Topic: Machine Learning for Software Reliability (Wang)
CS 6620 - Compilers Credits: 3
CS 6763 - Cyber-Physical Systems: Formal Methods, Safety and Security Credits: 3
CS 6888 - Software Analysis and Applications Credits: 3
CS 8501 - Special Topics in Computer Science Credits: 3
Approved Topic: Neural Network Verification
CS 8524 - Topics in Software Engineering Credits: 1 to 3