The program in computer science offers courses in most areas of the
field and provides flexible options for advanced research. To enter the
program, applicants must have completed an accredited undergraduate
program in computer science or at least taken the core courses required
for an undergraduate degree in computer science. This includes a
substantial background in mathematics, especially calculus, linear
algebra, discrete mathematics, and probability/combinatorics. Students
should have at least one term in all of these subjects and two terms in
calculus. Finally, applicants should have taken high-level languages,
data structures, assembly language and machine organization, algorithm
design and analysis, and an advanced undergraduate-level elective
course. All applicants are required to take the Graduate Record
Examination's general and computer science examinations.
Candidates for an M.S. degree have two options. They may complete 30
credits of course work and write an acceptable expository essay, or
they may take 24 credits of course work and submit a master's thesis
worth 6 credits. The candidate also must pass the program's master
examination, which is designed to ensure breadth of knowledge. Courses
are offered to help students prepare for the examination.
A
candidate for the Ph.D. degree must complete 48 hours of course work
beyond the bachelor's degree. Students who enter the program after
earning a master's degree may apply to transfer 24 of the 48 credits
required for the lower degree. Normally, the program requires one year
in residence, but in special cases the department will consider
alternatives to full-time residence. In addition, the student must pass
a qualifying examination before beginning his or her thesis research,
which forms a major part of the Ph.D. program (24 credits). The thesis
should cover original investigations in one or more problems in
computer science. A master of philosophy degree is available to
doctoral candidates.
Current research being done by the
graduate faculty is expected to stimulate doctoral research. Faculty
research interests include algorithms, artificial intelligence,
combinatorics, complexity theory, computational biology, computational
geometry, computational linguistics, data structures, distributed
systems, graphics, human-computer interaction, information systems,
knowledge representation, machine learning, mathematical programming,
and mobile computing. Faculty members also are exploring numerical
analysis, networking, optimization, parallel computing and systems,
programming languages and compilers, software engineering, and vision.
All qualified graduate students are eligible to be considered for
teaching assistantships and fellowships. Also, several grant-supported
research projects have research assistantships for advanced graduate
students.
Several coupled computing environments supporting
faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates are accessible from a
variety of desktop workstations (Sun, DEC, NCR, Dell, Apple). These
environments provide cycle and file service using multiuser servers
(Sun, SGI, PC) over high-speed networks that support shared printers
and modems. All faculty and graduate student offices are equipped with
networked workstations connected to servers that support large-memory
and massive parallel computing. In addition, dedicated research and
instructional laboratories are available. Students, for example, have
access to electronic laboratories and classrooms, clusters of PC
servers, and two 64-processor Sun Enterprise 10,000 units. The
department's computer facilities are run by the staff of the Laboratory
for Computer Science Research.
All facilities are located in
the CoRE (Computer Research and Engineering) Building, which also
houses the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer
Science (DIMACS), and in the Hill Center for the Mathematical Sciences,
which also houses the Library of Mathematical Sciences.
Further information may be found in the Graduate Program in Computer
Science, a brochure available from the program and on the web at http://www.cs.rutgers.edu.
