Computer Science, Computational Science Concentration (PhD in Computer Science)

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The total credit hour requirement for the Ph.D. in CS is 48 credits. Twenty-four credits must be accumulated by completing a program of courses approved by the Department.  Twenty-four credits of CSCI 800 Dissertation are required as part of the 48 credits.  No more than 24 credits of CSCI 800 Dissertation can be used to satisfy the requirement of 48 semester hours of graduate credit.

A candidate for the Ph.D in Computer Science with a concentration in Computational Science must satisfy the requirements specified by the Computer Science, Ph.D. with the following modifications:

Course Requirements

Students seeking the Ph.D. in computer science with a concentration in Computational Science must complete eight courses taken at William & Mary. CSCI 649 Computational Methods is required, as is at least one graduate course from CSCI 6x8 or a course from outside the department, to be selected together with and approved by the student’s advisor.

If two or more graduate CSCI 6x8 courses or courses outside the department are taken, only one of them can be used to satisfy the department’s eight-course requirement. In all cases, the grade point average will be based on the seven courses taken inside the department.

Computational Science Advisory Committee

Each computational science student will have a three-person computational science advisory committee within the department to advise the student about what is needed to meet the certification requirements of the Computational Science Cluster.

The committee will also approve the graduate course(s) from outside the department and ensure that the dissertation topic incorporates computation in a creative way, either by developing an enabling computational technology or by using such technologies to obtain a significant scientific result.