cornell computer science phd program

Departments

• Computer Science
• Information Science
• Statistics and Data Science

Computer Science at Cornell

50 years of innovation.

Since 1965, our department has been an academic leader in the study and science of computing. Cornell has made groundbreaking achievements in distributed computing systems, information retrieval, computational theory, trustworthy computing, artificial intelligence, social networking, and computer graphics. What will we be doing over the next five decades? To find out, visit our website at cs.cornell.edu

Before Computer Science

Dick Conway and Bill Maxwell of Industrial Engineering develop CORC on the Burroughs B-220 and Control Data 1604 to provide a simpler language than Fortran or Algol. CORC can be described on a single page. CORC is taught beginning in the Fall 1962.

The Department of Computer Science (CS) is formed, with Juris Hartmanis as Chair.

Gerard Salton, “the father of information retrieval”, brings his SMART system to Cornell from Harvard. His work with SMART (System for the Mechanical Analysis and Retrieval of Text) forms the basis for 35 years of research in IR, and lays the conceptual foundation for Google and other modern search Engines.

Juris Hartmanis publishes the paper that starts the field of computational complexity, with Dick Stearns: On the computational complexity of algorithms, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 117 (1965), 285-306. Later, they receive the ACM Turing Award for this work.

CS produces its first PhD, Joel Sturman, a transfer from Electrical Engineering.

Juris Hartmanis and Dick Stearns publish the first of many influential texts by CS: Algebraic Structure: Theory of Sequential Machines (Prentice Hall).

Dick Conway, Bill Maxwell, and Louis Miller publish the classic text Theory of Scheduling (Addison-Wesley).

Gerry Salton publishes the classic IR text Automatic Information Organization and Retrieval (McGraw-Hill).

Gerry Salton becomes Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the ACM (Association for Computer Machinery) —the first of many influential editorial positions held by members of CS.

John Hopcroft and Jeff Ullman publish their classic text Formal Languages and Their Relation to Automata (Addison-Wesley).

Dick Conway's group develops PL/C, a subset of PL/1, designed for instructional purposes. The PL/C compiler is distributed to 100 institutions and instantly becomes the standard instructional PL/1 compiler.

Gerry Salton becomes Department Chair.

Faculty members Jim Bunch and Jorge More win Householder Prizes for their PhD theses in numerical analysis.

David Gries publishes the first text on compiler construction: Compiler Construction for Digital Computers (John Wiley & Sons).

Gerry Salton publishes The SMART Retrieval System Experiments in Automatic Document Processing (Prentice Hall).

CS grows to 15 faculty members

Juris Hartmanis becomes the founding editor of Springer-Verlag's LNCS series (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) and continues as editor for 30+ years. LNCS now publishes 600+ volumes annually.

David Gries becomes the founding Editor of Springer-Verlag's Text and Monograph Series (TMCS). He still edits the series, along with Fred Schneider.

John Hopcroft becomes Managing Editor of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Journal on Scientific Computing.

Dick Conway and David Gries publish the first programming text to deal with issues of correctness, like loop invariants: An Introduction to Programming, a Structured Approach Using PL/1 and PL/C (Winthrop).

Al Aho, John Hopcroft, and Jeff Ullman publish their classic text The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms (Addison- Wesley).

John Dennis and Jorge More publish their landmark paper Quasi-Newton Methods, Motivation and Theory, which changes the game of non-linear equation-solving through the use of approximate Jacobian matrices.

Gerry Salton's new book, Dynamic Information Library Processing (Prentice Hall), receives the Best Information Science Book of 1975 from the American Society for Information Science (ASIS).

Bob Constable starts the development of PL/CV. Developed over nine years, PL/CV eventually results in Nuprl, a system for mathematical reasoning which is still widely used today. Thirty PhD students learned how to do research using PL/CV and Nuprl.

Dick Conway becomes series editor for Winthrop Publishers.

Dick Conway and David Gries publish several variations of their intro to programming text.

John Dennis and Charlie Van Loan procure HP-67 programmable calculators which make it possible to execute a stored program—a departmental first.

Juris Hartmanis becomes Department Chair for the second time.

CS acquires its first computer, a PDP 11/60.

David Gries and student Susan Owicki receive the ACM Programming Languages and Systems Award for An axiomatic proof technique for parallel programs (Acta Informatica 6, 1976) ). Based on Susan's PhD thesis, this paper introduces interference freedom as the basis for proving parallel programs correct.

CS introduces two undergrad degrees: BA in Arts & Sciences and BS in Engineering.

Bob Constable and student Mike O'Donnell publish A Programming Logic (Winthrop).

Cornell adopts the Cornell Program Synthesizer for instruction in programming. Tim Teitelbaum and student Tom Reps develop this precursor to today's integrated development environments (IDEs) for teaching a subset of PL/1 on Terak microcomputers. In 1980-1981, the Cornell Program Synthesizer is distributed to 80 institutions.

Gerry Salton becomes Chair of ACM SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval).

CS obtains a $2.6 million, 5-year CER (Coordinated Experimental Research) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a major step in increasing its presence in experimental computing.

David Gries publishes The Science of Programming (Springer-Verlag), which brings ideas on the formal development of programs to the undergrad level.

David Gries becomes Department Chair.

CS grows to 20 faculty.

The 1982 National Research Council (NRC) Assessment of Research Doctorate CS programs places Cornell fifth out of 58 departments.

Gerry Salton receives the first ACM SIGIR Award for outstanding contributions to information retrieval.

Bob Constable, with students Johnson and Eichenlaub, publishes a book on their verifier, Introduction to the PL/CV Programming Logic (Springer-Verlag).

CS begins to move into interdisciplinary work, helping to start a new graduate field of "manufacturing systems engineering".

David Gries receives a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Tom Reps receives the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his PhD thesis, Generating Language-Based Environments (MIT Press).

ACM SIGIR establishes the Gerard Salton Award to honor those who have made significant, sustained, and continuing contributions to research in information retrieval. The first recipient is Gerry Salton himself.

Tom Coleman publishes Large Sparse Numerical Optimization (Springer-Verlag LNCS 165).

Charlie Van Loan and Gene Golub publish Matrix Computation (Johns Hopkins Press).

The CS computing facility serves as the gateway for the entire university to Arpanet and CSnet. CS is instrumental in the university's Project Ezra to increase the use of computers on campus, which is funded by an $8 million grant from IBM.

Use of the Cornell Synthesizer Generator grows to more than 330 institutions.

CS receives its second five-year CER grant from the NSF

The Cornell Theory Center, founded in 1984, becomes one of four NSF supercomputer centers. IBM provides an additional $30 million in hardware, software, and staff.

Ken Birman develops the first version of Isis, the first system for fault-tolerance in distributed systems.

David Gries receives the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) Education Award for his contributions to computer science education.

Joe Halpern receives a best paper award at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI).

CS moves to Upson Hall, and adds 22,000 square feet of space.

John Hopcroft shares the ACM Turing Prize with Bob Tarjan "for fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures". The work was Bob Tarjan's PhD thesis at Stanford, advised by Hopcroft. Their major achievement was a linear algorithm for graph planarity testing, and many more ideas on algorithm design and data structures came out of their collaboration.

Former PhD student Kurt Mehlhorn and frequent visitor Wolfgang Paul receive the German Leibniz Prize.

The Nuprl work reaches a milestone: Bob Constable and his students publish Implementing Mathematics with the Nuprl Proof Development System (Prentice Hall).

David Gries publishes the first of five years of Taulbee Surveys, which give data on PhD-granting departments. The five years of surveys have an almost 100% completion rate.

John Hopcroft becomes Department Chair.

CS grows to 25 faculty members and 200 computers.

David Gries chairs the Computer Science Board (the precursor to the Computing Research Association) which provides a forum for the discussion of issues in computer science research and education.

John Hopcroft chairs the NSF Advisory Committee for Computer Research.

Don Greenberg receives the ACM Steven Coons Award which honors lifetime contributions to computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Gerry Salton receives the Distinguished Science Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

Ramin Zabih and David McAllester receive the best paper award at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) conference.

Don Greenberg receives the National Computer Graphics Association Academic Award.

Juris Hartmanis and John Hopcroft are elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Gerry Salton is named a Pioneer of Computing in the Annals of the History of Computing. He receives the ACM Award for Best Review in Computing Reviews.

Bart Selman receives a best paper award at the Canadian Society for the Computational Studies of Intelligence (CSCI) conference.

Eva Tardos receives the American Mathematical Society’s Fulkerson Prize for her paper, A strongly polynomial minimum cost circulation algorithm.

David Gries becomes a Managing Editor of Information Processing Letters.

Fred Schneider becomes Editor-in-Chief of Distributed Computing.

Tom Coleman and Charlie Van Loan publish the Handbook for Matrix Computations (SIAM).

Tim Teitelbaum and former student Tom Reps publish two books on the Synthesizer Generator (Springer Verlag).

Ken Birman starts a company called Isis Distributed Systems, Inc., which brings the Isis system to the private sector, industry, and government.

Tom Coleman becomes Director of the Cornell Advanced Computing Research Institute, a unit of the Cornell Theory Center.

Chaired by David Gries, the Computer Science Board changes its name to the Computing Research Association (CRA), opens an office in Washington, and works to represent the national interests of computing research.

John Hopcroft authors a report for the NSF Advisory Committee for Computer Research (with Ken Kennedy). Computer Science: Achievements and Opportunities helps set the direction of NSF computing research funding.

Gerry Salton is Chair-Elect of Section T of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) which is concerned with issues of Information, Computing, and Communication.

Gerry Salton receives the ASIS Award of Merit, the American Society of Information Science’s highest honor, bestowed annually to an individual who has made a noteworthy contribution to the field of information science.

Bart Selman receives a best paper award at the conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR).

Bob Constable and student Doug Howe publish Implementing Metamathematics as an Approach to Automatic Theorem Proving (Elsevier Science).

Gerry Salton publishes Automatic Text Processing (Addison Wesley).

With the completion of Rhodes Hall, CS expands to 38,000 square feet of space.

David Gries receives the ACM SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Award for his contributions to CS education.

David Gries receives the CRA (Computing Research Association) Award for Service to the CS Community.

Juris Hartmanis is elected a Foreign Member of the Academy of Science of Latvia.

John Hopcroft receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Seattle in Washington.

Tom Coleman and Yuying Li publish Large-scale Numerical Optimization (SIAM Publications).

The CS research budget tops $6 million. CS receives an NSF grant to investigate Revitalizing the Computer Science Curriculum and acquires an 8000-node CM-200 data parallel computer.

Bob Constable receives a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Don Greenberg is elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

John Hopcroft is appointed to the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation. He also becomes Chair of the Board of Trustees of SIAM.

Dexter Kozen publishes The Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Springer-Verlag).

Steve Vavasis publishes Nonlinear Optimization: Complexity Issues (Oxford Science).

Juris Hartmanis becomes Department Chair for the third time.

John Hopcroft becomes Associate Dean of Engineering.

Juris Hartmanis is Chair of the NRC Committee that produces Computing the Future (National Academy Press). This influential report assesses academic computer science and engineering, and advocates for a broader research and educational agenda. This paves the way for the interdisciplinary vision of CIS--that computing should touch every department at Cornell.

Bart Selman receives a best paper award at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference (AAAI).

Dick Conway is elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Juris Hartmanis is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dexter Kozen receives a Prize from the Polish Ministry of Education, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Students Aravind Srinivasan and Alessandro Panconesi receive the Best Student Paper Award at the ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing.

CS undergrads do well on the Putnam Math Competition. The team of Kleinberg, Munoz, and Krosky places fifth out of 284, and Zhang places in the top ten individuals.

Charlie Van Loan publishes Computational Frameworks for the Fast Fourier Transform (SIAM).

Bob Constable becomes Department Chair.

Juris Hartmanis shares the ACM Turing Award with Dick Stearns, "in recognition of their seminal paper, which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory". (See the entry for 1965).

Juris Hartmanis receives a Humboldt Foundation Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. This foundation enables scholars to do research in Germany.

Researcher Yuying Li receives the 1993 Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis from the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

David Gries and Fred Schneider publish A Logical Approach to Discrete Math (Springer Verlag).

Stratus Computer acquires Ken Birman's Isis Distributed Systems, Inc. Isis is now the core technology used in the NY and Swiss Stock Exchanges, the French Air Traffic Control System, and by the US Navy.

John Hopcroft becomes Dean of Engineering.

David Gries receives the IEEE Computer Society Taylor Booth Education Award from the world’s largest professional organization of electrical and electronics engineers for his "commitment to education in CS and Engineering as demonstrated by a record of outstanding teaching and mentoring, writing of textbooks, curriculum development ..."

Juris Hartmanis receives the Senior Distinguished Scientist Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany.

Dan Huttenlocher is the CASE New York State Professor of the Year. The award is given by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education for an individual professor’s positive impact on undergraduates, scholarly approach to learning, and contributions to undergraduate education.

David Gries is among the first ten to receive a Cornell Presidential Weiss Fellowship for his contributions to undergrad education.

Three such awards are given each year; Cornell has ~1600 faculty members.

T.V. Raman receives the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his PhD thesis, Audio System For Technical Readings (Springer-Verlag, 1998). Raman, whose advisor was David Gries, is now a researcher at Google.

Ken Birman becomes Editor-in-Chief of the ACM journal, Transactions on Computing Systems.

Researchers Jim David, Dean Krafft, and Carl Lagoze release Dienst, which becomes the foundation for future digital library interoperability.

CS mourns the passing of Gerry Salton, a founding member of the department and the father of information retrieval.

David Gries receives the ACM Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award and an honorary doctorate from Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire.

Juris Hartmanis receives the Bolzano Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic for Merit in the Field of Mathematical Sciences. He also receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Dortmund in Germany.

Neil Immerman (former student of Juris Hartmanis) and Róbert Szelepcsényi are awarded the Gödel prize for their paper showing that nondeterministic logarithmic space is closed under complement.

Fred Schneider becomes Professor-at-Large at the University of Tromso, Norway.

Ken Birman chairs The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency  (DARPA) Information Science and Technology study on the survivability of critical infrastructure as it relates to the Department of the Defense. Fred Schneider is also on the committee.

Bruce Land wins first place in the Web-based instructional materials competition of the ACM Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (SIGUCC) Conference.

Don Greenberg receives the Associate of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ASCA)Creative Research Award. .

.Dan Huttenlocher is one of three faculty members (out of 1600) to receive a Cornell Presidential Weiss Fellowship for his contributions to undergraduate education.

Bart Selman receives a best paper award at the AAAI Conference.

Joe Halpern becomes Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the ACM.

CS grows to 30 faculty and has over 500 computers.

Juris Hartmanis takes a two-year leave to serve as Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science Engineering at the NSF. During his tenure, he effectively positions NSF and CISE to assume a leadership role in response to the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee report, and is instrumental in shaping the discussion that leads to NSF's Information Technology Research (ITR) program.

Joe Halpern shares the 1997 Gödel Prize with former student Yoram Moses for their landmark paper Knowledge and Common Knowledge in a Distributed Environment.

Stephen Vavasis receives a Guggenheim Fellowship.

David Shmoys becomes Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Journal of Discrete Mathematics.

Ken Birman publishes Building Secure and Reliable Network Applications (Prentice Hall).

Srinivas Keshav publishes An Engineering Approach to Computer Networking: ATM Networks, the Internet, and the Telephone Network (Addison-Wesley).

Dexter Kozen publishes Automata and Computability (Springer-Verlag).

Fred Schneider publishes On Concurrent Programming (Springer-Verlag).

Nick Trefethen and student David Bau publish Numerical Linear Algebra (SIAM).

Charlie Van Loan publishes Introduction to Scientific Computing: a Matrix Approach Using MATLAB (Prentice Hall).

With CS providing leadership, Cornell starts the Faculty of Computing and Information Science (CIS) to provide a home for interdisciplinary computing work of all kinds. CS, the Program for Computer Graphics, and Digital Libraries are part of it.

Tom Coleman becomes the Director of the Cornell Theory Center.

Joe Halpern is founder and administrator of CoRR (the ACM-sponsored Computing Research Repository).

Pedro Felzenszwalb is the CRA Outstanding Male Undergraduate Awards Runner-up. David Liben-Nowell receives an Honorable Mention.

David Gries receives an honorary doctorate from Miami University.

Juris Hartmanis receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Missouri.

Bill Arms becomes Chair of the ACM Publications Board and Editor-in-Chief of D-Lib Magazine.

Fred Schneider is Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) journal Security and Privacy.

Fred Schneider is Chair of the NRC committee that produces the report Trust in Cyberspace (National Academy Press). This report assesses the state-of-the-art procedures for constructing trustworthy networked information systems and proposes directions for research in computer and network security, software technology, and system architecture.

Jon Kleinberg publishes his Web-search work on using hubs and authorities. The research is credited, together with the Brin-Page work on PageRank, with forming the basis for the current generation of Internet search tools.

Charlie Van Loan becomes Department Chair.

Bob Constable becomes Dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science.

Under the leadership of Tom Coleman, the Cornell Theory Center opens the Financial Solutions Center on Broad Street in Manhattan.

Carla Gomes receives a Special Recognition Award, Information Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, for her groundbreaking research in integrating AI and operations research techniques.

Don Greenberg receives an honorary doctorate from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Dexter Kozen is the Class of 1960 Scholar, Williams College.

Juris Hartmanis receives the CRA Distinguished Service Award for his service in the areas of government affairs, professional societies, publications, conferences, and leadership which has a major impact on computing research.

Greg Morrisett and students Steve Zdancewic and Dan Grossman receive the best paper award in the European Association for Programming Languages and Systems Conference on Principles, Logics, and Implementation of High-Level Programming Languages.

Keshav Pingali and his students receive the best paper award at the International Conference of Supercomputing.

Eva Tardos receives a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Bill Arms becomes Series Editor of the MIT Press series on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing.

Johannes Gehrke publishes the second edition of Database Management Systems (McGraw Hill), with Ragu Ramakrishnan.

David Schwartz publishes Introduction to UNIX and Introduction to Maple (Prentice Hall).

Bart Selman's work on phase transitions and complexity is featured in The New York Times.

Former students John Belizaire and Julian Pelenur sell their company, Theory Center, Inc. The one-year-old company, a leading provider of Java Beans, was sold to BEA Systems for $100 million.

Ramin Zabih receives a joint appointment with the Cornell Medical School, the first of its kind at Cornell.

The Intelligent Information Systems Institute (IISI) is established, with Carla Gomes as Director.

The US Air Force Research Laboratory /Cornell Information Assurance Institute (IAI) is founded with a $1 million dollar yearly grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), with Fred Schneider as Principal Investigator.

Juris Hartmanis receives the Lielo Medal from the Latvian Academy of Sciences for his outstanding creative contributions.

Jon Kleinberg receives the award for best paper at the ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems.

Bart Selman is elected Fellow of the AAAI.

Eva Tardos is elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Fred Schneider chairs the International Review of UK Computer Science Research.

Bill Arms publishes Digital Libraries (MIT Press).

Former undergrads Greg Pass and Frank Wood sell their company, ToFish, to AOL. Greg is now Chief Technology Officer at Twitter.

The national organization Engineers for a Sustainable World is started at Cornell under the direction of Regina Clewlow, CS ’01. There are now chapters in 21 universities.

Jon Kleinberg receives the 2001 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award for Initiatives in Research. Jon was cited for "his development of deep and innovative algorithms to solve fundamental problems in network, information extraction, and discrete optimization".

Greg Morrisett wins an Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence, given by Carnegie Mellon University.

Andrew Myers and students Steve Zdancewic, Lantian Zhen, and Nathaniel Nystrom receive the best paper award at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP) 2001.

Fred Schneider chairs the NSF Information Technology Research Program Review.

Undergraduate Allegra Angus receives the CRA Outstanding Female Undergraduate Award.

Graeme Bailey is among the first four winners of the Cornell University Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award.

Researcher Donna Bergmark receives the best paper award for Collection Synthesis at the ACM Joint Conference on Digital Libraries.

Joe Halpern receives a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Researcher Carl Lagoze, with three others, defines the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The work has led to renewed interest in shared metadata and increased ability to locate relevant digital assets regardless of geographical location.

Tim Roughgarden receives honorable mention in the ACM PhD thesis competition and receives the MPS Tucker Prize. His advisor was is Eva Tardos.

Student Tim Roughgarden wins the Danny Lewin Best Student Paper Award at the Symposium on the Theory of Computing 2002.

PhD student Ioannis Vetsikas and his software "whitebear" wins first place in the Trading Agent Competition.

PhD '92 Daniela Rus and BA '93 Sendhil Mullainathan win the MacArthur Genius Award.

Ramin Zabih and student Vladimir Kolmogorov receive the best paper award at the European Conference on Computer Vision.

David Gries becomes Associate Dean of Engineering.

CS offers an undergrad Information Science major in the Arts & Sciences.

The Cornell Game Design Initiative is formed under the direction of Dave Schwartz.

Bob Constable is elected to the CRA Board.

Fred Schneider co-chairs the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board.

The CS Programming Team wins honorable mention in the world finals at the ACM meeting in the Czech Republic.

The CUAUV (CU Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) team, advised by Grame Bailey and other Engineering faculty, wins the top prize in the Annual International ROBOSUB competition.

Omar Khan receives the CRA Outstanding Male Undergraduate Award.

Undergrad Eugene Lee takes first place in a national Intel Student Research Contest. Lee's project, supervised by Kavita Bala, tackles the challenge of producing high-quality, interactive rendering of sophisticated graphics, such as those used in movies or computer games.

Jon Kleinberg, Eva Tardos, and student David Kempe receive the Best Research Paper Award in the ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

Steve Marschner shares a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science with Henrik Jensen and Pat Hanrahan. Their model of subsurface scattering of light in translucent materials was most famously to create the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Fred Schneider receives an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Eva Tardos becomes editor-in-chief of the SIAM Journal on Computing.

Bill Arms becomes series editor of the MIT Press Series on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing.

Kavita Bala publishes Advanced Global Illumination (AK Peters) with Philippe Bekaert, and Phil Dutre.

Lillian Lee's work with postdoctoral student Regina Barzilay on a system that learns to paraphrase is featured in The New York Times.

Joe Halpern publishes Reasoning About Uncertainty (MIT Press).

 Juris Hartmanis becomes Senior Associate Dean of CIS.

CS offers an undergrad degree in Information Science, Systems, and Technology in Engineering, jointly with Operations Research & Industrial Engineering.

The PhD program in Information Science is approved.

The new Cornell Library Collaborative Learning Computer Lab (CL3), designed by David Schwartz, is inaugurated.

Dick Conway is honored by the scholarly journal Management Science for his seminal research in computer simulation which "established the research agenda for the simulation field for decades".

Johannes Gehrke receives a Cornell University Provost's Award for Distinguished Scholarship.

Carla Gomes and Bart Selman receive the Distinguished Paper Award at the Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming.

Researcher Carl Lagoze receives the Frederick G. Kilgour Award from the Library Information Technology Association (LITA). Lagoze's research, the citation says, "has led to significant achievements in the areas of distributed digital collections, the harvesting of metadata, and the establishment of open standards."

Lillian Lee shares the best paper award at the Human Language Technology Conference, with Regina Barzilay.

Once again, PhD student Ioannis Vetsikas and his software "whitebear" win first place in the Trading Agent Competition. From 2001 to 2005, his worst finish is third.

David Gries publishes Multimedia Introduction to Programming Using Java (Springer-Verlag), with his son, Paul.

Fred Schneider is named chief scientist of TRUST (Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technologies), a new five-university NSF Science and Technology Center.

In its annual review of " Technology Research Advances of 2004", Technology Research News magazine includes work by two CS groups. Jon Aizen, Dan Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg, and Tony Novak devised a way to measure users' reactions to an item description; and Lillian Lee and Regina Barzilay developed software that picks up the topic structure of whole documents to generate more accurate automatic summaries.

Student Thomas Finley receives a Distinguished Student Paper Award at the International Conference for Machine Learning (ICML).

John Hopcroft receives the 2005 IEEE Harry Goode Memorial Award for "fundamental contributions to the study of algorithms and their applications in information processing".

Doug James is listed among Popular Science magazine’s Annual Brilliant Ten, which is awarded to the most impressive scientists in the US.

Thorsten Joachims receives a best paper award at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).

Jon Kleinberg receives a MacArthur Genius Award.

Jon Kleinberg, Jure Leskovec, and Christos Faloutsos receive the Best Research Paper Award at the 11th Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

Student Alexandru Niculescu-Mizil receives a Distinguished Student Paper Award at ICML.

Student Filip Radlinski receives the Best Student Paper Award at the ACM Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) Conference.

Kavita Bala and Phil Dutre edit the book, Rendering Techniques. (Springer Verlag.)

Jon Kleinberg and Eva Tardos publish Algorithm Design. (Addison-Wesley.)

Eva Tardos becomes Department Chair.

Carla Gomes, Ashish Sabharwal, and Bart Selman win the Best Paper Award at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference (AAAI).

Joe Halpern receives a best paper award at the conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR).

Thorsten Joachims receives a best paper award at the ACM SIGKDD conference Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD).

Jon Kleinberg receives the 2006 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize for his “deep, creative, and insightful contributions to the mathematical theory of the global information environment.” He also receives a best paper award at the conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN).

Eva Tardos is elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and wins the George B. Dantzig Prize from SIAM.

Dexter Kozen publishes Theory of Computation (Springer Verlag, Texts in Computer Science series).

Fred Schneider is elected to the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA) and becomes Chair of the Government Affairs Committee.

Ed Clarke (PhD 1976) shares the ACM Turing Award with E. Allen Emerson and Joseph Sifakis, “for their role in developing model-checking into a highly effective verification technology that is widely adopted in the hardware and software industries”.

John Hopcroft receives the CRA Distinguished Service Award.

Doug James receives a best paper award at the ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA).

Jon Kleinberg receives a best paper award at the World Wide Web Conference (WWW).

Andrew Myers and co-authors Stephen Chong, Jed Liu, Xin Qi, K. Vikram, Lantian Zheng, and Xin Zheng receive the Best Paper Award at the Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP).

Fred Schneider receives a SIGOPS award (Special Interest Group on Operating Systems) for the most influential paper on operating systems over the past ten years.

Ashutosh Saxena receives a best paper award at the International Computer Vision conference on 3D Representation for Recognition (ICCV 3dRR).

Gun Sirer is listed among Popular Science’s Annual Brilliant Ten, which is awarded to the most impressive scientists in the US.

Student Daria Sorokina receives a best student paper award at the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML).

Eva Tardos publishes Algorithmic Game Theory with Noam Nisan, Tim Roughgarden and Vijay Vazirani (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Under the direction of Lillian Lee, the department drastically changes its undergraduate degree requirements in response to the computing field’s increasingly interdisciplinary nature. The department adopts a "vectors" model, where a vector represents a "line of inquiry" that students may take within CS.

The Institute for Computational Sustainability is founded, with Cornell as its primary campus. The institute, which aims to apply computational techniques to help solve some of the most challenging sustainability problems of our time, is funded by an NSF Expeditions in Computing grant, one of only four such grants awarded in the inaugural year of the Expeditions program.

Joe Halpern wins the ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award for fundamental advances in reasoning about knowledge, belief, and uncertainty, and their groundbreaking applications in AI, CS, game theory, economics, and the philosophy of science.

John Hopcroft receives the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award.

John Hopcroft receives an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the University of Sydney.

Jon Kleinberg wins the ACM/Infosys Foundation Award in Computing Sciences for his contributions to the science of networks and the World Wide Web.

Jon Kleinberg is among Discover Magazine’s 50 most important, influential, and promising people in science.

Jon Kleinberg receives Smithsonian Magazine's America's Young Innovators Award, given to people under the age of 36 who are shaping the world.

Students Alexandru Niculescu-Mizil and Yogeshwer Sharma receive a best student paper award at the Conference on Learning Theory (COLT).

Ken Birman receives the IEEE Technical Committee on Distributed Processing Outstanding Achievement Award.

Joe Halpern is a co-recipient of the annual ACM Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing.

John Hopcroft receives an Honorary Degree from the Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics, & Optics, Russia’s top national research university.

Thorsten Joachims receives a Fraunhofer-Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation. He also receives the award for the Most Influential Paper at the ICML.

Jon Kleinberg receives the Katayanagi Emerging Leadership Prize, awarded annually to an individual recognized as an emerging research leader.

Lillian Lee is one of only four Cornell faculty members (out of 1600) to win university's Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award.

Andrew Myers receives a “test of time” award for the Most Influential Paper on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), presented annually to the author(s) of a paper presented at POPL ten years prior.

Undergraduate Tal Rusak receives the CRA Outstanding Male Undergraduate Award.

Noah Snavely receives honorable mention in the ACM PhD thesis competition.

Joe Halpern becomes Department Chair.

Bill & Melinda Gates Hall, the future home of the CIS departments of CS and IS, is fully funded with no debt before the first shovel hit the ground. Starting with a generous $25 million donation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, fundraising for the $60 million project concludes in the fall of 2010 with donors from almost every Cornell college.

The CUAUV (CU Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) team, advised by Grame Bailey and other Engineering faculty, wins the top prize in the Annual International ROBOSUB competition for the second year in a row.

Ken Birman receives the IEEE Tsutomu Kanai Award for major contributions to distributed computing systems and their applications.

Student Stefano Ermon receives a best student paper award at the conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP).

Johannes Gehrke receives a Humboldt Research Award.

John Hopcroft receives an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and an Honorary Doctorate from Chongqing University, and is named Einstein Professor at the Chinese Academy of Science. He also receives the IEEE Von Neumann Medal, for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology.

Dan Huttenlocher receives the award for the Most Influential Paper, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), which has made "fundamental contributions to computer vision that have withstood the test of time" over the past ten years.

Bobby Kleinberg receives a best paper award at the ACM conference on Electronic Commerce (EC).

Fred Schneider is a member of the Norges Tekniske Vitenskapsakademi, Noway’s equivalent of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Eva Tardos received the Glover-Klingman Prize, awarded annually for the best paper in Networks.

Tim Teitelbaum and his former student Tom Reps share the ACM SIGSOFT (Special Interest Group in Software Engineering) Retrospective Impact Paper Award for their 1984 paper, The Synthesizer Generator.

Hakim Weatherspoon receives the Black Engineer of the Year Award at the BEYA STEM Conference.

Daisy Fan and Charlie Van Loan publish Insight Through Computing: A Matlab Introduction to Computational Science and Engineering (SIAM).

Jon Kleinberg and David Easley publish Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World (Cambridge University Press).

Gabriel Bender, Johannes Gehrke, Nitin Gupta, Christoph Koch, Lucja Kot, and Sudip Roy receive a best paper award at the Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) conference.

Johannes Gehrke receives a Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists from the New York Academy of Sciences.

Johannes Gehrke receives the IEEE Technical Achievement Award for outstanding and innovative contributions to the fields of computer and information science, engineering, or computer technology.

Carla Gomes becomes a Radcliffe Fellow. She also receives a best paper award at the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).

Joe Halpern wins the ACM SIGART (Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence) Autonomous Agents Research Award.

John Hopcroft receives an Honorary Doctorate from Beijing Institute of Technology.

Doug James receives a Guggenheim Fellowship. He also receives a best paper award at the ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA).

Fred B. Schneider is elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Noah Snavely receives a TR35 Award from MIT’s Technology Review, which recognizes him as one of 35 innovators under the age of 35 who are “tackling important problems in transformative ways".

David Steurer receives an honorable mention in the ACM PhD Thesis Competition.

Eva Tardos receives the Van Wijngaarden Ward, given every five years for exceptional contributions to mathematics and computer science.

Ramin Zabih receives the award for Most Influential Paper at the International Conference on Computer Vision.

The CUAUV (CU Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) team, advised by Grame Bailey and other Engineering faculty, wins the top prize in the Annual International ROBOSUB competition for the fourth time since 2003.

The CUAir undergrad team, advised by Ashutosh Saxena, wins first in mission performance and second overall at the Office of Naval Research Student Unmanned Air Systems competition (ONR SUAS).

Undergraduate Justin Cheng receives the CRA Outstanding Male Undergraduate Award. Eunsol Choi (female) and Alec Story (male) receive honorable mentions.

Saikat Guha, PhD '09, receives a TR35 Award from MIT’s Technology Review, which cites him as one of 35 innovators under the age of 35 who are “tackling important problems in transformative ways".

Juris Hartmanis is elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He also receives CalTech’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Jon Kleinberg, along with his co-author David Easley, is awarded the annual Lanchester Prize for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English. The prize is in recognition of his book Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World (Cambridge University Press).

Fred B. Schneider receives the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award for his work on cybersecurity.

Eva Tardos is elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the Hungarian Academy of Science.

Eva Tardos shares the Gödel Prize with former Cornell student Tim Roughgarden for their paper, How Bad Is Selfish Routing?

The CUAUV (CU Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) team, advised by Grame Bailey and other Engineering faculty, wins the top prize in the Annual International ROBOSUB competition for the fourth time in six years.

Ken Birman and Thoms Josephs paper, Exploiting virtual synchrony in distributed systems, receives the Hall of Fame Award at the 11th ACM Symposium.

John Hopcroft receives the Outstanding Research Award of the Web Intelligence Consortium.

Doug James shares a Technical Achievement Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science with Theodore Kim '01, Nils Thuerey, and Markus for wavelet turbulence software, which generates realistic swirling smoke and fiery explosions.

Doug James receives the Katayanagi Emerging Leadership Prize, awarded annually to an individual recognized as an emerging research leader.

Undergraduate Vera Khovanskaya receives the CRA Outstanding Female Undergraduate Award.

Jon Kleinberg receives the ACM SIGKDD Innovations Award, a lifetime achievement honor for technical excellence.

PhD student Hema Koppula wins the best student paper award at RSS'13.

Dexter Kozen receives an ACM/IEEE LICS (Logic in Computer Science) Test of Time Award.

Andrew Myers and his student Chinawat Isradisaikul receive the Distinguished Paper Award at the PLDI (Programming Language Design and Implementation) 2013 conference

Andrew Myers and his student Owen Arden, along with MIT co-authors Alvin Cheung, Sam Madden, and Armando Solar-Lezama, receive the best paper award at the 2103 Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR).

David Shmoys and David Williamson receive the annual Lanchester Prize for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English, in recognition of their book The Design of Approximation Algorithms. (Cambridge University Press.)

Noah Snavely is one of 102 researchers across all science and engineering disciplines to receive a PECASE (Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers) award.

Ramin Zabih receives the Koenderink Prize for Fundamental Contributions in Computer Vision.

Changxi Zheng (PhD 2012) is named one of “30 under 30” innovators in science and healthcare by Forbes Magazine.

Fred Schneider becomes Department Chair.

Cornell Tech, a graduate campus in NYC, opens.

Gates Hall opens in January, with a dedication ceremony to be held at the CS 50th Anniversary celebration and symposium on October 1.

The Cornell student game APSIS is awarded the “Most Promising Indie” at Casual Connect 2014.

The CUAUV (CU Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) team, advised by Grame Bailey and other Engineering faculty, wins the top prize in the Annual International ROBOSUB competition for the fifth time in six years.

Kavita Bala wins the best paper award at Expressive 2014’s symposium on Computational Aesthetics, with Manohar Srikanth and Fredo Durand of MIT.

Bob Constable receives the Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning.

David Gries and the late Wlad Turski are named “Honorary Editors-in-Chief” of IPL for their 40 years of service to the journal.

Juris Hartmanis is a co-recipient of the ACM’s Distinguished Service Award, for his definitive role in establishing CS as a vibrant subject.

David Kempe (PhD ’03), Jon Kleinberg, and Eva Tardos receive the KDD 2014 inaugural Test of Time Award for their paper Maximizing the Spread of Influence through a Social Network.

Bobby Kleinberg and Jon Kleinberg, with co-authors Peter Frazier and David Kempe, receive the Best Paper Award at the ACM Economics and Computation (EC) conference.

Jon Kleinberg wins the Harvey Prize, given each year by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology for breakthroughs in science.

Ashtosh Saxena wins the Early Career Spotlight Award at the Robotics Science and Systems Conference.

Noah Snavely receives the ACM SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) Significant New Researcher Award.

Noah Snavely and his student Kevin Matzen win the Best Paper Award at the European Conference on Computer Vision.  

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Below you will find the curriculum and degree requirements for completing a PhD in Information Science at Cornell. If you have any further questions, please contact our Graduate Field Assistant Barbara Woske .

PhD studies in information science center on the social, cultural, economic, historical, legal, and political contexts in which information systems are employed, both to inform the design of such systems and to understand their impact on individuals, social groups, and institutions. In regard to research, PhD students use a combination of multiple methodologies, including mathematical analysis, computer modeling, software system design, experimental studies, and critical social evaluations, from such traditional disciplines as computer science, cognitive psychology, social science, cultural studies, and history.

Required Core Courses 

Students should consult with their advisor to select the 4 areas they will complete. During each semester a subset of these courses will be taught; new classes may be added as they become available. Students must complete 4 courses from 5 different areas with a letter grade of B+ or higher in order to fulfill the core requirement. Students may take more than one course in a given area if it is of interest, but this will have no effect on graduation requirements. All core courses must be at a 6000 level or higher, offered and taken for a minimum of 3 credits, and receive a letter grade of B+ or higher to meet the degree requirements.  There is no exception to this requirement.  

Students should plan to pre-enroll whenever it is possible.  Otherwise students should enroll in all courses during the open enrollment time at the beginning of each semester.  It is the responsibility of each student to review their course enrollment and confirm it is correct prior to all enrollment deadlines. Please note, some courses require a survey, and if approved by the instructor a pin number will be given for enrollment. 

Core course requirements should be completed prior to the A exam, unless an exception has been arranged with the Director of Graduate Studies.

If a student feels an alternative 6000 level or higher course meets our core course requirement in one of our areas, they may petition to enroll and receive credit for this alternative class.  Students must submit a petition by doing the following:

• Fill out the Ph.D. Core Course Petition  at least 1 month prior to the first day of open enrollment. You will be required to upload the complete course description as it appears in the course roster, upload the current syllabus of the course in the petition, and indicate your reason for this petition.
• Email all these materials to the faculty area leads, copying the GFA.

The faculty area leads will email the student, the Chairperson, and the GFA once a decision has been made on the petition. Students should not assume the petition will be approved, and all decisions are final. 

Design Core Area 

Area leads: Wendy Ju, Francois Guimbretiere

• Addressing Open-ended questions
• Familiarity with body of work [readings/great works/methods]
• Studio [working in an iterative manner within an open social environment that invites comment and critique]
• Ethics [consideration of values, equity and  broader factors]
• Design research [exploration in making, including ethnographic, aesthetic, formal or material studies]
• Efficacy [criteria for selection/evaluation of alternatives, including human preference, broader capability or aesthetic]
• Production & presentation of made work [spoken/portfolio/exhibit]

Original Core Course

• (No pre-enroll accepted. Please fill out this survey . If chosen, pins will be sent out in late January.)

Approved Alternatives

• (To be considered for enrollment, please fill out the course enrollment survey , and come to first class.)
• INFO 6940: Special Topics Qian Yang - Topic: Human-AI Interaction Design Research
• INFO 6420: Re-Designing Robots
• CS 6755: Mobile Human Robot Interaction

Courses Not Approved

• INFO 6410: HCI and Design

Behavioral Core Area

Area leads: Sue Fussell, Malte Jung

• Theory: familiarity with relevant theory and ability to develop theory driven arguments, research questions, and hypotheses
• Methods: familiarity with and ability to apply a range of behavioral research methods including surveys, experiments, or interviews
• Analysis: Familiarity with a range of behavioral analysis methods 
• Writing: practice in writing behavioral research papers
• Presenting: practice in presenting behavioral research (e.g. poster or conference talk)
• Experience: Conducting a potentially publishable behavioral research project (including developing hypotheses, developing IRB protocol, study design, execution, data analysis, and report preparation
• INFO 6310 Behavior and Information Technology
• INFO 6450: Computer Mediated Communication
• INFO 6490: Social Behavior and Technology
• INFO 6240: Sensemaking: Theory and Practice

Ethics, Law and Policy Core Area 

Area Leads: Karen Levy, Helen Nissenbaum

• Involves substantial focus on social, political, economic, cultural, and/or ethical dimensions of technology development and/or use
• Systematic methods for, theories of, and approaches to analyzing these dimensions are nor merely assumed or incidental to substantive topics but constitute sustained objects of the course’s attention
• Involves substantial independent research and writing 
• INFO 6210: Information, Technology, and Society
• INFO 6620: Social Research Design and Method
• INFO 6940: Privacy and Security in the Data Economy  
• INFO 6940: Red Tape: The Media and Technology of Bureaucracy
• INFO 6940: Rural Computing and Rural Infrastructure
• SOC 6310 Qualitative Research Methods for Studying Science
• INFO 6113: Technology and Law Colloquium
• CS 6382 – Data Science for Social Change

Networks, Communities and Markets Core Area 

Area Leads: Jon Kleinberg, Cristobal Forestier

• Covers mathematical models of social networks and/or economic interaction. 
• Integrates these models with applications to computing systems and on-line platforms. 
• Requires reasoning about the mathematical properties of these models in the context of their use. 
• Includes a research or project component as part of the coursework. 
• INFO 6260: Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Foundations for Formal Analysis & Design
• HD 6610: Text and Networks in Social Science Research 
• SOC 6110: Social Networks Theory and Applications
• INFO 6850: The Structure of Information Networks
• COMM 6750: Research Methods for Social Networks and social media 
• INFO 6220: Networks II: Market Design

Computational Methods Core Area 

Area Leads: Paul Ginsparg, Matt Wilkens

• Covers multiple computational methods as integral parts of the course
• Offers reflection on the motivations for, and applicability of, computational methods in specific problem domains
• Culminates in a substantial piece of achieved research output, or lays significant groundwork for such an output (e.g., a detailed project proposal with preliminary results)
• Involves hands-on programming and/or extensive use of statistical software
• INFO 6010: Computational Methods for Information Science Research
• INFO 6350: Text mining for history and literature
• INFO 6300: Advanced Language Technologies
• INFO/CS 6742: Natural Language Processing and Social Interaction
• CS 6384 /ORIE 6217 Applied Bayesian Data Analysis
• CS 6784: Advanced Topics in Machine Learning 
• DESIGN 6297: Coding for Design III
• CS 6382: Data Science for Social Change
• CS 6670: Computer Vision

Teaching Requirement

Each Ph.D student is required to serve as a teaching assistant for two semesters.

Concentrations

Information Systems examines the computer science problems of representing, organizing, storing, manipulating, and using digital information.

Human Computer Interaction uses an interactive, user-centered design approach to study the interplay between technology and what people do with technology.

Cognition focuses on the human mind, which is the ultimate producer and user of information.

Social Aspects of Information studies the cultural, economic, historical, legal, political, and social contexts in which digital information is a major factor.

Nominating Your Special Committee

Each student's committee must consist of three members representing each of the following: primary IS concentration (this is the committee chair), secondary IS concentration, and external minor. The committee must be formed no later than the end of the third semester. See Cornell's Graduate School page on Nominating Your Special Committee . Each Ph.D. student's campus location is determined by the location of their preferred or temporary advisor. Students should consider this when choosing their permanent advisor, since students are expected to be on the same campus – either Ithaca or New York City – as their advisors. 

The student's committee may require the student to take courses in addition to the core requirements.

EXTERNAL MINOR

Each Ph.D. student will select an external minor. This will often be a closely related field, such as Cognitive Studies, Communication, Computer Science, Science & Technology Studies, Economics, Linguistics, Mathematics, Operations Research, Psychology, or Sociology.

The A exam tests the student's breadth in Information Science and depth in their proposed thesis area. The committee has to be selected before the A exam can take place. Students generally take the A exam after completing their coursework and at a point where they've outlined their research and have some preliminary results. They write responses to questions posed by their committee members, and then discuss their answers at an oral examination with their full committee present.

Students are expected to make a thesis proposal by the end of their third year. As part of the thesis proposal, the student will be required to demonstrate depth in at least one concentration, sufficient to carry out fundamental research. The student's Ph.D. committee will decide how this expertise will be evaluated.

Computer Science

As a computer science major, you’ll learn algorithmic ways of thinking and study the elements of computing and information technology such as system design, problem specification, programming, and the modeling, analysis and evaluation of complex systems. You’ll also learn the many applications of computing in science, engineering and business, and have the opportunity to take classes and do research in such areas as artificial intelligence, robotics, computational logic, computer architecture, computer graphics, computer vision, computing systems, databases and digital libraries, machine learning, natural language processing, networks, programming languages and compilation, scientific computing, security and theory of computation.

Sample classes

• Advanced Topics in Computer Game Architecture
• Machine Learning
• Cloud Computing
• Algorithmic Game Theory

All information below is based on the 2022 First-Destination Survey. Lists are not exhaustive; rather, they are a sampling of the data. If you would like more information, please email  [email protected]

What can you do with a degree in Computer Science?

Graduate school:.

In 2022, 29% of computer science majors embarked on graduate school journeys. They pursued various advanced degrees, with 58% focusing on their MEng, 19% working towards an MS, 14% dedicated to a PhD, and more. Their graduate field interest ranges from Computer Science (74%) to Engineering Management (5%) and Information Sciences (5%).

These ambitious individuals have chosen to continue their education at prestigious institutions like Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Employment:

69% of computer science graduates secured employment, and the majority entered sectors in technology (60%) and financial services (19%). Meta and Google were the top 2022 employers.

Where 2022 Computer Science Graduates Work

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Associated interests

• Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality
• Computer Science and Programming
• Game design
• Human behavior
• Statistics and data science

Related disciplines

• Sciences and Mathematics

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Master of Science Degree Program

You are here.

The CS MS is a very small, highly selective, four-semester program for students who wish to deepen their knowledge of computer science through advanced coursework, research, writing, and teaching. The program is ideal for self-motivated students who have expository skills, enjoy the research environment, and like working with undergraduates in introductory courses. Students in the program serve as teaching assistants and receive full tuition plus a stipend.

Summary of Degree Requirements

At least thirty-four credit hours of work is required. Six to twelve credit hours must be associated with thesis research (CS 7999). The remainder of the credit-hour requirement is fulfilled by taking between six and eight graduate-level courses. At least four of these courses must be CS courses at the 5000-level (or higher) and at least one of these must be at the 6000-level. An outside minor is required and that typically involves two or three graduate-level courses. A written thesis and oral presentation are also required.

Financial Support

Students who are admitted into the program serve as full time teaching assistants (TA’s) during each of the four semesters. This involves a fifteen-hour commitment to TA duties each week. In exchange, the student receives full tuition, a stipend to cover basic living expenses, and health insurance. Summer instructorships, TA-ships, and research assistantships are available but are not guaranteed. Serving as a TA is an integral part of the program. To remain in good standing in the program, students have to be among the top TAs in their assigned courses. TA performance is evaluated at the end of each semester.

If you have questions regarding the MS in CS, please first check our FAQ . If you do not find the information you are looking for, feel free to send e-mail to the general information e-mail address [email protected]

Students wishing to earn a Ph.D. should apply directly to the Ph.D. program.

All application material must be submitted through the graduate school's online application system.

Click HERE to establish an account .

/images/cornell/logo35pt_cornell_white.svg" alt="cornell computer science phd program"> Cornell University --> Graduate School

Computer science m.eng. (ithaca), field of study.

Computer Science

Program Description

The Field of Computer Science is intended for students who are primarily interested in the general aspects of computational processes, both theoretical and practical. Areas of research in the field include algorithms, architecture, artificial intelligence, computer vision, computational biology, concurrency and distributed computing, database systems, machine learning, machine vision, natural language processing, networks, numerical analysis, programming environments, programming languages and methodology, robotics, and theory of computation. Research facilities: The department makes use of a mix of computing platforms, with about three-quarters of our research and instructional computing taking place on Microsoft's Windows operating systems and Intel Architecture processors and the remaining quarter on Red Hat Linux desktop and Red Hat Linux and Sun Solaris back-end servers. The department has more than1,200 computers ranging from desktops to high-end parallel processing servers, more than 15 terabytes of online disk storage, and a backbone network based on switched Gigabit Ethernet. In addition to the resources directly owned and operated by the department, computer science students and researchers have access to a number of university facilities. The university provides extensive campus-wide networking, including RedRover, an 802.11b wireless campus network. National and international access is provided by three OC3 connections to the global Internet. High-speed community access is available through Time-Warner's RoadRunner cable modem system and several DSL providers. Finally, through the Cornell Theory Center and the Program in Computer Graphics, computer science researchers have access to a wide range of advanced parallel processing and supercomputer systems, as well as advanced graphics and visualization systems.

Contact Information

110D Gates Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY  14853

Concentrations by Subject

• artificial intelligence
• computer science
• programming languages and logics
• scientific computing and applications
• theory of computation

The Bursar's office updates the  tuition rate for M.Eng.  degrees each academic year. M.Eng. degrees are considered Tier 1.

Application Requirements and Deadlines

Fall: Feb. 1; Spring: Oct. 1

Requirements Summary:

To permit immediate enrollment in graduate-level courses, applicants are expected to have an appropriate background in the major subject chosen. Please visit our Web site for more information on the field.

The M.Eng. in Computer Science is offered in two sites-Cornell's main campus in Ithaca and the Cornell NYC Tech campus in New York City. Students are admitted to the program at a specific campus and take all courses at that location.

For more information on the M.Eng. program in Ithaca, please vis it http://www.cs.cornell.edu/grad/MEngProgram/MEngAdmissions/index.htm .

For information on the M.Eng. program in New York City, please visit: http://blogs.cornell.edu/tech

• Please review the requirements on the M.Eng Program  Application Guide
• M.Eng. - for general questions regarding the M.Eng. application, email [email protected] or see the Admissions home page Admissions home page . For specific questions related to the program in New York City, email [email protected] .

Learning Outcomes

• Mastery and Application of Core Disciplinary Knowledge
• Problem Formulation, Organization, and Planning of the Solution Process
• Collaborative Problem Solving and Issue Resolution
• Communication of Knowledge, Ideas, and Decision Justification
• Self-directed Learning and Professional Development

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• Master of Engineering in Data Science & Decision Analytics
• Master's Curricula
• Jacobs Technion-Cornell Dual Master of Science Degrees with a Concentration in Connective Media
• Jacobs Technion-Cornell Dual Master of Science Degrees with a Concentration in Health Tech
• Jacobs Technion-Cornell Dual Master of Science Degrees with a Concentration in Urban Tech
• Master in Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Master in Operations Research and Information Engineering
• Intellectual Property
• Benefits & Perks
• Runway Application
• Degree Programs

Engaged Learning, Multidisciplinary Teams

Technology and information overcome boundaries – and so do our programs. At Cornell Tech, our Master of Engineering and Technion-Cornell Dual Master’s students work in teams with MBA and LLM candidates, building real systems.

An Introduction to Cornell Tech

This first-of-its-kind degree, developed with input from tech-driven companies like Facebook and The New York Times , puts you at the intersection of technology, human psychology and cognition, and entrepreneurship.

Deepen your technical skills while gaining the industry-specific knowledge you need to develop technologies that can make health care safer, more effective and more affordable.

In our newest two-year program, you will acquire two world-class tech credentials as you find ways to make cities smarter, more sustainable, and more livable. In addition, your living laboratory will be New York City—the ultimate urban ecosystem and the perfect place to build unparalleled connections.

The Johnson Cornell Tech MBA combines the rigorous foundation of a Johnson Graduate School of Management MBA with an experiential immersion in technology and entrepreneurship.

The technology field is increasingly fast-paced and entrepreneurial, and the most successful developers and programmers are the ones who understand how the tech and startup worlds fit together. Our CS master’s degree will give you that understanding.

The Master of Engineering in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Cornell Tech is a year-long immersive program designed to teach engineers, scientists and quantitative analysts important state-of-the art methods in signal processing, data science and decision theory.

Master of Engineering in Data Science and Decision Analytics

There are complex algorithmic frameworks behind most online platforms deciding which vehicle to assign to a passenger in a ride sharing system depending on the geographical allocation of the vehicle supply, what price to charge for a product depending on the inventories or which fulfillment center to use to store an incoming shipment. Cornell Tech’s Master’s in Decision Science and Decision Analytics (DSDA) will provide you the tools to understand the data-to-algorithms-to-decisions pipeline by drawing from tools in machine learning, optimization and statistics.

Any business in any industry gains a competitive edge when they can harness data to inform strategic decisions. Our ORIE Master’s will give you the mathematical and modeling skills you need to put data to work.

The explosion of new tech products and new tech companies has created a growing demand for skilled lawyers who are passionate about technology and understand the legal and regulatory challenges faced by startup businesses. This first-of-its kind tech LLM will give you the knowledge and experience you need to advise innovative tech startups.

The Design Technology program is a two-year research and project degree offered jointly by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and Cornell Tech which culminates in a master of science (M.S. DT).

Acquire formal expertise in advanced technical fields of computer science, like machine learning and computer security. Then apply your knowledge immediately to innovation challenges issued by real companies from New York’s tech sector. You’ll build complete digital solutions for social impact and the marketplace by working in teams with other Cornell Tech students from business, law, and technology. Whether you plan to move up or spin out, this flexible, two-year part-time Cornell computer science program will accelerate your trajectory.

Career Outcomes

Cornell Tech’s employers include a wide range of mostly tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Datadog, Intersection, Oscar Health, ZocDoc and many others.

Computational Biology PhD

The main objective of the Computational Biology PhD is to train the next generation of scientists who are both passionate about exploring the interface of computation and biology, and committed to functioning at a high level in both computational and biological fields.

The program emphasizes multidisciplinary competency, interdisciplinary collaboration, and transdisciplinary research, and offers an integrated and customizable curriculum that consists of two semesters of didactic course work tailored to each student’s background and interests, research rotations with faculty mentors spanning computational biology’s core disciplines, and dissertation research jointly supervised by computational and biological faculty mentors.

The  Computational Biology Graduate Group  facilitates student immersion into UC Berkeley’s vibrant computational biology research community. Currently, the Group includes over 46 faculty from across 14 departments of the College of Letters and Science, the College of Engineering, the College of Natural Resources, and the School of Public Health. Many of these faculty are available as potential dissertation research advisors for Computational Biology PhD students, with more available for participation on doctoral committees.