The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree is generally intended for students who have a B.S. or M.S. degree in Computer Science and who want to pursue a research and/or college-level teaching career. The program leading to the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science is rigorous and requires coursework, research, exams, and the writing of a dissertation.  These Computing Research Association videos provide a few reasons why students undertake a  Ph.D. in Computer Science.  Click on this Graduate Inquiry Form if you would like to receive more information.

To help you to understand the requirements for the Ph.D. degree it is important to understand how the Ph.D. program is administered by the University. Since the Ph.D. degree is a graduate degree, it is ultimately managed by The Graduate School at MSU. Therefore, to earn a Ph.D. degree, a student must satisfy the requirements of

Career Possibilities

A Computer Science Ph.D. prepares you for both positions in industry and academia.  To give you a better idea of what is possible, the following list shows what some of our Ph.D. graduates are doing as of Fall Semester 2020.

  • Juan Banda, Assistant Professor at Georgia State University
  • Alan Cleary, Research Scientist at National Center for Genome Resources
  • Debzani Deb, Associate Professor at Winston-Salem State University
  • Patrick Donnelly, Assistant Professor at University of Oregon
  • Nathan Fortier, Director of Research at Golden Helix Inc.
  • Muztaba Fuad, Associate Professor at Winston-Salem State University
  • Doug Galarus, Assistant Professor at Utah State University
  • Lou Glassy, Senior Computer Scientist at Novetta Solutions
  • Utkarsh Goel, Architect at Akamai Technologies
  • Michael Grinder, Principal Software Development Engineer in Test at Rubicon Project
  • Timothy Hahn, Software Engineering Manager at Raytheon Corporation
  • Aaron Hall, Software Engineer at Workiva
  • Minghui Jiang, Associate Professor at Utah State University
  • Ivan Judson, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft
  • Guangchi Liu, Research Scientist at Stratifyd
  • Richard McAllister, Chief Information Officer, Weather Stream
  • Logan Perreault, Senior Software Engineer at Cruise Automation
  • Karthik Ganesan Pillai, Data Scientist and Senior Software Engineer at Cerner Corporation
  • Letu Qingge, Post-Doc at University of North Carolina - Charlotte
  • Thiruvarangan Ramaraj, Assistant Professor at De Paul University
  • Neal Richter, CTO at Rakuten Marketing
  • Daniel Salinas, Assistant Professor at Westminster College
  • Michael Schuh, Data Scientist at Oshkosh Corporation
  • Shane Strasser, Senior Software Engineer at Oracle
  • Liessman Sturlaugson, Data Scientist at Boeing Research & Technology
  • Hasari Tosun, Principal Research Engineer at Turnitin
  • Shen Wan, Software Engineer at Google
  • Tim Wiley, Assistant Professor at University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley
  • Sean Yaw, Assistant Professor at Montana State University

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