Computer Science, Ph.D.

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COMPUTER SCIENCE PH.D. DEGREE

Ph.D. students are expected to gain in-depth expertise in a specific area of computer science. To achieve this, students start working with faculty advisors during their first semester, attend seminars, participate in professional conferences, and submit refereed publications throughout the program. In addition to specific course requirements, students are expected to develop essential skills for well-founded research, engage in department activities, and regularly attend colloquia and seminars. Ph.D. students receive funding through fellowships or research assistantships.

Ph.D. Student Assessments

Each Ph.D. student’s progress and achievements will be assessed twice a year by their faculty advisor and a three-person faculty committee. The results of this assessment will be shared with both the student and the faculty advisor. For more details, please refer to the “Computer Science Graduate Student Handbook.”

Ph.D. Qualification Committee

This committee must consist of the student’s advisor(s) and two additional Computer Science (CS) faculty, totaling at least three CS faculty members.

CS faculty are defined as those with primary or secondary appointments in Computer Science. Courtesy appointments in CS do not count toward the required number of CS faculty members on the committee.

The student must form a committee and schedule the qualifying exam at least two weeks prior to the exam. The Engineering School (SEAS) graduate office needs 2 weeks prior to the qualification exam date to approve the committee. The committee must have an explicitly designated chair who will direct meetings and ensure proper procedure. The advisor(s) may not serve as the chair. Once the committee is formed, the student submits the Committee Form to the Graduate Program Coordinator.

Ph.D. Doctoral 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 PhD committee (Dissertation Proposal and Dissertation Defense) should be arranged by the student after the qualifying exam. The committee must consist of a minimum of five faculty members. Membership must include at least three Computer Science faculty members, at least one UVA faculty member from outside the Computer Science department and at least one other member with expertise in the research area, i.e. 3 CS faculty + 1 UVA faculty (outside CS) + 1 outside expert. The Department recommends that one of the committee members be an expert from outside the University. CS faculty are defined as those with primary or secondary appointments in CS. Faculty with courtesy appointments in CS do not count toward the required number of CS faculty members on the committee.

Ph.D. Degree Requirements (72 graduate-level credits):

3 credits of CS 6190 Perspectives (required) in the first semester. This course is coordinated with, and the course grade is in part conditioned upon, performance in the First-Year Rotation.
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 focal areas (tracks) listed below. The breadth requirement is the same for Ph.D. and M.S.
12 credits of graded, graduate-level CS electives (graduate-level 6000 and above) or other graduate courses approved by the advisor and the PhD Graduate Program Director.
12 credits of CS 8897/9897 (Graduate Teaching Assistant Requirement)
33 credits of CS 8999/CS 9999 (Research)
Completion of the Qualifying Examination
Completion of the PhD Dissertation Proposal
Completion of the Oral Defense of the written Dissertation

General Notes:

A graded credit means that the course resulted in a letter grade (A, B, C, etc.)
No grade lower than a “B” will be accepted towards satisfying the PhD degree requirements (graduate-level 6000 and above). While a course with a passing grade lower than B will count in the GPA, it will not count toward degree requirements.
At most 3 credits of CS 6993/7993 (Independent Study) may count toward the degree.
None of CS 8897/9897 (Graduate Teaching Instruction), CS 8999 (Thesis), CS 9999 (Dissertation) or any English as a Second Language (ESL) course can be used to satisfy this 24-credit coursework (12 breadth + 12 electives) requirement.
If a student transfers a STEM Master’s degree and receives 24 “bulk transfer” credits, then 6 additional credits of CS coursework taken at UVA are required. These credits cannot be satisfied via transfer.
Coursework should be chosen from among our CS graduate courses. Non-CS courses may be approved on a case-by-case basis by the student’s academic advisor and the PhD Graduate Program Director. (PGPD)

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 Ph.D. degree requirements is determined by the MGPD.

Breadth Areas & 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 (Ji)

Approved Topic: Advanced Topics in Deep Learning (Qi)

Approved Topic: Advanced Topics in Machine Learning (Ji)

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 (Dwyer)
CS 8524 - Topics in Software Engineering Credits: 1 to 3