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Department of Computer Science
Department Chair: Dr. Heggere Ranganath The Program The home of UAH, Huntsville, Alabama, has one of the largest high tech research communities in the Southeast. At the core of this community are literally hundreds of companies that develop software as part of their research. What better place could there be to study computer science! The opportunities are almost unlimited for our graduates! The Computer Science department provides a challenging and rewarding educational program, offering both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees and its graduates are highly sought after not only in Huntsville, but also nationally. The department has also been quite successful in educating students who do not have a traditional computer science background. With over 200 graduate students, many of which are also working in local industry or research labs, the department offers a strong curriculum with emphases in software engineering, graphics, image processing, networking, and theoretical computer science. The faculty are experienced, with many having industrial as well as academic experience, and as a result provide outstanding and practical research guidance to our students. The faculty are also dedicated to excellence in teaching and are continually rated the highest in the college in their student course evaluations. Most full-time faculty are actively involved in research programs, providing many opportunities for students to obtain assistantships and participate in new and exciting projects. The department has outstanding state-of-the art computing labs, high speed Internet connectivity and easy access to high-performance machines at the nearby Alabama Research and Education Network. A wide variety of software development tools, CASE tools and support software is available. The M.S. degree includes four required courses in computer architecture, algorithm design and analysis, software engineering and operating systems. The M.S. degree is offered with a coursework option of 33 semester hours or a thesis option of 24 semester hours of coursework plus 6 thesis hours. A Software Engineering Certificate may be earned by completing 18 semester hours of software engineering courses. The Ph.D. degree requires 60 semester hours of coursework and 18 semester hours of dissertation credit. A preliminary exam covering the areas of software engineering, algorithm design and analysis, operating systems, programming languages, formal languages and automata theory and computer architecture is required. Upon completion of the coursework, a comprehensive exam must also be taken. Admission Requirements Admission policies are consistent with those of the
graduate school. A score of 1500 on the GRE is required, with the departmental
average close to 1800. It is important that graduate students either
have had instruction in the fundamentals of computer science at the
undergraduate level or significant industrial experience. If that is
missing, courses in the areas of object-oriented software development,
discrete structures, algorithm design and analysis, operating systems
and introduction to computer architecture may be required as prerequisites
before graduate study may begin. |
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