Georgia Tech creates new Ph.D. program in Computational Science & Engineering

The Colleges of Computing, Engineering, and Sciences at Georgia Tech has announced the creation of a new doctoral degree in Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), a cooperative, truly interdisciplinary effort between the three academic units spearheaded by the Computational Science and Engineering division in the College of Computing. Combined with a Master’s degree program in CSE, Georgia Tech now offers a comprehensive post-graduate study program that explores the full scope of this expanding field. “Computation has become widely accepted as the third mode of discovery, along with theory and experimentation, in the advancement of scientific knowledge,” said Richard Fujimoto, Regents’ Professor and Chair of the Computational Science and Engineering division in the College of Computing. “Computation, through modeling, simulation, analysis and its other forms, is essential in creating new applications with great impact on the sustainable growth of cities, the design of power-efficient buildings, the creation of new biomedical devices, the eradication of life-threatening diseases and other issues of great social importance. Through the study of phenomena as large as the universe, or the engineering of systems as small as nanomaterials, breakthroughs in the CSE field will be the catalyst for future innovations that affect society and culture on a global scale.” Georgia Tech is an established leader in the fields of engineering and sciences, and is quickly becoming recognized for defining the direction of the computing discipline. Interdisciplinary in nature, this new degree program will capitalize on the talented faculty and wealth of resources that exist in these three areas and enable students to take best advantage of the growing number of career opportunities in this field. Approximately 10 candidates per year are expected to be admitted, gradually building the program to 50 enrolled students. Georgia Tech currently has over 80 faculty actively engaged in CSE research. The new CSE doctoral program begins with core computational science and engineering research requirements, along with dedicated components to solidify each student’s competency within a variety of computing specializations. Students must take at least four courses from the following five areas of study: numerical and scientific computing, computational science and engineering algorithms, modeling and simulation, computational data analysis and visualization, and high performance computing. As the student’s research progresses, he/she will then select a primary computational area of focus, a course of study in some application domain, as well as a qualifier examination and, finally, the completion of a dissertation.