Program Structure and Requirements (with MSc Degree)
Overall Program Structure
The PhD in COSC consists of a minimum 60 credit hours, distributed as follows: 3 credit hours of Program Core courses, 21 credit hours of Program Technical Elective courses, 36 credit hours of Dissertation research and two zero credit PhD Research Seminar courses. The technical background of the student will be assessed by a Written Qualifying Examination (WQE), followed by a Research Proposal Examination (RPE) which the student must successfully complete in order to progress further in the program. The components of the PhD program are summarized in the table below.
All the courses that the students will take are at PhD level.
Program Core (3 credit hours)
Students must complete the core courses listed below.
Core Courses
Program Electives (21 credit hours)
Students must complete a minimum of seven technical elective courses from the list below. Subject to the approval of the dissertation Main Advisor, up to two elective courses (6 credit hours) can be taken from another relevant PhD program in KU
Electives
| COSC 702 | Advanced AI-Driven Software Engineering | 3 |
| COSC 705 | Strategic Requirements Engineering | 3 |
| COSC 720 | Quantum Computing | 3 |
| COSC 722 | Efficient Algorithms for Convex Programming | 3 |
| COSC 735 | Advanced Computer Vision Paradigms | 3 |
| COSC 737 | Network and Cyber Physical Systems Security | 3 |
| COSC 738 | High Performance Computing | 3 |
| COSC 739 | AI-ML Systems for Cybersecurity | 3 |
| COSC 740 | Vision-Language Models | 3 |
| COSC 741 | Advanced Digital Communications | 3 |
| COSC 742 | Large Language Models for Computing and Engineering | 3 |
| COSC 794 | Selected Topics in Computer Sc | 3 |
| 723 723 | Cyber Sec in Intrnt of ThinApp | 3 |
PhD Research Dissertation (minimum 36 credit hours)
Students must complete a PhD Research Dissertation that involves novel, creative, research-oriented work under the direct supervision of at least one full-time faculty advisor from the College, and at least one other full-time faculty who acts as a co-advisor. The Main Advisor of a student who opts for a PhD must be a faculty member in the Department offering that particular program. The outcome of research should demonstrate the synthesis of information into knowledge in a form that may be used by others. The research findings must be documented in a formal Dissertation and defended successfully in a viva voce examination. Furthermore, the research must lead to publishable quality scholarly journal articles.
Dissertation
Total Credit Hours: 60