Visit Day 2003Steve Vavasis

Professor & Chair of PhD Admissions

Schedule for the day

9:05-10:05 Introduction

10:05-11:00 PL, Systems, Security, Computer Engr., DB

11:05-12:05 Faculty Meetings I and II

12:05-1:30 Lunch

1:30-2:25 Theory, Logic, Comp. Bio, Information Sci, Numer. Ana.

2:25-2:35 Break

Schedule for the day

2:35-3:30 AI, NLP, Graphics and Vision

3:35-4:35 Faculty Meetings III & IV

4:35-4:50 Break

4:50-5:30 Wrap up

Presenters for this session

Bob Constable, Dean of Computing and Information

Science

Éva Tardos, Director of Graduate Studies

Charlie Van Loan, Chair of CS Department

Computer Science at Cornell

The Environment for PhD Students

Charlie Van LoanProfessor & Chair

The Lay of the Land

As a PhD student, your well-being will depend on

What life is like in the department

and

What life is like at Cornell.

JoeBartLillianClaireRichThorsten

TomTomSteve VCharlie

RaminKBSteve MDanDon

FredKenGunJeanna

EvaDexterJonJohnDavid S

BobTimGregAndrewKeshavRadu

DaisyDaveGraeme

BillJohannesAlJai

GolanRon

The Faculty

JoeBartLillianClaireRichThorsten

TomTomSteve VCharlie

RaminKBSteve MDanDon

FredKenGunJeanna

EvaDexterJonJohnDavid S

BobTimGregAndrewKeshavRadu

BillJohannesAlJai

GolanRon

The Graduate Field

Zygmunt SheilaEvan Sally Jose Rajit Martin MarkPhoebe HodShimon AnilEric Robbert

Computer SciencePrograms

Major/Minor (Engin.)

Major (Arts & Science)

Master of Engineering

Graduate Field

Other Academic Programs

Information Science Major*/Minor (Arts) Major*/Minor (Engin) Major*/Minor (Ag ) Graduate Field*

Computational Sci & Engin Graduate Minor Field*

Computational Biology A Track for Bio Majors

Digital Arts and Graphics

The Computing and Information Science (CIS) Initiative

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Joint Curriculum, Space

School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering Cooperation on Information Science Initiatives

Department of Communications Cooperation on Information Science Initiatives

Medical College in NYC Ramin’s joint appointment with the Dept of Radiology

The Johnson Graduate School of Management Dan’s joint appointment, e-business, courses

Some Cornell Connections

Nearby Graduate Fields

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Operations Research

Economics

Science and Technology Studies

Cognitive Studies (Psych, Linguistics, NeuroBio)

Information Science*

Applied Mathematics

Mathematics

Nearby Research Entities

The Information Assurance Institute

The Intelligent Information Systems Institute

The Program in Computer Graphics

The National Science Digital Library

The Computer Systems Laboratory

The Cornell Theory Center

Information Assurance Institute

Intelligent InformationSystems Institute

To perform andstimulate research incompute and data intensive methods forintelligent decisionmaking systems

A center of innovation in digital libraries.

A community center for groups focused on digital-library-enabled science education.

Funded by the National Science Foundation.

The National ScienceDigital Library

Computer architecture, Parallel computer architectureOperating systems and compilersComputer protocols and networksProgramming languages and environments Distributed systems VLSI design and fabricationSystem specification and verification

ComputerSystemsLaboratory*

*Speight, Myers, Burtscher, Sirer, Martinez, Morrisett, Manohar, Gehrke, McKee

Hosts the world's largest Windows-based high performance computing cluster.

Some concentrations of effort..

Computational Finance Computational Genomics Computational Materials Research

The Campus Environment(nearby research, related programs, etc)

and (of course)

The Local Environment(potential advisors, requirements, the culture, etc)

So, Take Into Consideration…

Computer Science at Cornell

The PhD Program

Éva TardosProfessor

Choosing an Advisor and a Research Area

Most students spend a semester or two “looking around”– taking a course with a faculty

member in their area of interest– asking about research projects– doing small projects– attend seminars

Possible AdvisorsThe CS faculty:

JoeBartLillianClaireRichThorsten

TomTomSteve VCharlie

RaminKBSteve MDan

FredKenGunJeanna

EvaDexterJonJohn

BillJohannesAlJai

GolanRon

Other field members:

• Faculty members in other department

• whose research overlaps with CS significantly,

• can advise CS students

Current field members fromECE, OR, Psychology, MAE,

Math, S&TS

Some senior researchers

BobTimGregAndrewKeshavRadu

Seminars

Computer Science Colloquium– Distinguished

speakers – interviews

Brown Bag Lunch– Faculty about

their research– Professional

development talks

Many area seminars:• Systems Lunch• Graphics Seminar • Natural Language

Processing• Artificial Intelligence • Theory Seminar• Information Science • PRL seminar• Database Seminar

CS Field Requirements:

Q exam– demonstrates “breadth” of background at the

undergraduate level.

– covers five areas: Theory, Languages, Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Computing

– Exam is diagnostic: may be replaced by courses

– Encourage you to try many (or all) after one semester

CS Field Requirements

• Graduate course work– You need to take six 600-level courses – 3 courses come from a list: one each in theory,

languages, systems. – Courses don’t have to be in Computer Science– Most students find this very easy and take many

more courses!

• Project requirement:– May use class project or a project done on a summer

job, or as undergrad.

Minor

• You will need to have a minor– A minor field is any graduate field

• Rules vary for the minor by fields– Usually, 3 courses but sometimes more or less, and

sometimes “other” requirements

• Typical choices: – Electrical Engineering, – (Applied) Mathematics,– Cognitive studies – and many others…

Exams

• “A” Exam: – take it once your research is underway– present your work and ideas for a thesis

topic– Usually taken after 2-3 years

• “B” exam = thesis defense– You take it when your work is finished and a

draft of your thesis is completed

Support

• TA positions – help in a course for max 15 hours week– You will have office hours and help grade., some teaching

• RA positions – faculty advisor pays for research

• Fellowships

• Summer– You can teach or TA for the department, have an RA– Many students work in industry to gain experience

Guaranteed financial support if you are in good standing –you’ll know long in advance if you are not

Where did our Graduates go?

Examples since 2000• Stephan Zdancewic (PL)

Univ. of Pennsylvania• Stephanie Weirich (PL)

Univ. of Pennsylvania• Amit Kumar (theory) Bell

Labs• Li Li (systems) Bell Labs• Yin Zhang (systems) AT&T• Rie Ando (NLP) IBM• Nick Howe (vision) Smith

College

• David Walker (PL) Princeton• Jia Wang (systems) AT&T• Xiaoming Liu (DB) Oracle• Adam Florence (NA) Bank of

America• Hickey Jason (logic) Caltech• Vera Kettnaker (vision) RPI• Dan Brown (comp.bio)

Waterloo• Chris Hawblitzel (systems)

Dartmouth