Programs

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 semester in all of these subjects and two semesters in calculus. Finally, applicants should have taken programming languages, data structures, algorithm design and analysis, computer architecture, operating systems, 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 a master of science degree have two options. They may complete 30 credits of coursework and write an acceptable expository essay, or they may take 24 credits of coursework and submit a master's thesis worth 6 credits. The courses must be chosen from a given set of courses in order to ensure breadth of knowledge.

A candidate for the doctor of philosophy degree must complete 48 credits of coursework beyond the bachelor's degree. Students who enter the program after earning a master's degree may apply to transfer up to 24 of the 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 satisfy the breadth and depth requirements before beginning his or her thesis research. For the breadth requirement, students must complete two category A courses and two category B courses with a grade-point average of 3.5 or better, no later than the end of the fifth semester. Transfer credits may not be used toward the breadth requirement. Students may apply for transfer credit once they have passed their qualifying examinations. To satisfy the depth requirement, students must complete (1) an independent study research project by the end of the fourth semester, and (2) must pass a qualifying examination by the end of the sixth semester. In addition, the student must pass the qualifying examination before beginning his or her thesis research. The thesis should cover original investigations of one or more problems in computer science.  A master of philosophy degree is available to doctoral candidates.

Faculty research interests cover nearly every aspect of computer science, including algorithms and complexity theory, combinatorics, cryptography and computational biology, numerical analysis, combinatorial and computational geometry, computer graphics, software engineering, programming languages and compilers, computer architecture, operating systems, distributed systems, networking, security, information and database systems, data mining, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. Faculty members are also exploring computational linguistics, networking optimizations, streaming management, mobile computing and networking, sensor networks, pervasive computing, vehicular computing and networking, and electronic commerce.

Many of our faculty members conduct their research in research laboratories such as the Systems and Design and Evaluation Laboratory (Dark Lab); the Mobile Computing Laboratory (Dataman Lab); the Laboratory for Network-Centric Systems (DisCo Lab); the Energy Efficiency and Low-Power Laboratory (EEL); the Pervasive, Available, No Futz Internet Computing Laboratory (PANIC Lab); the Programming Languages Laboratory (Prolongs Lab); the Security and E-Commerce Laboratory (SEC Lab); and the Vision, Interaction, Language, Logic, and Graphics Environment Laboratory (VILLAGE Lab). The computer science department has close ties to various research units and centers on campus providing students and faculty opportunities to participate in collaborative and multidisciplinary research. These include the Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling (CBIM), Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS), Rutgers Center for Operations Research (RUTCOR), and the Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB).

Current research being done by the graduate faculty is expected to stimulate doctoral research. All qualified doctoral students are eligible to be considered for teaching assistantships and fellowships. Also, many of the grant-supported research projects have research assistantships for advanced graduate students.

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. All facilities are located in the CoRE (Computer Research and Engineering) Building, in the Hill Center for the Mathematical Sciences, and are run by the staff of the Laboratory for Computer Science Research.

Further information may be found in the Graduate Program in Computer Science, a brochure available from the program and on the web at https://www.cs.rutgers.edu.