Doctoral Program in ACO

The following faculty is acting as a coordinating committee for the program: Egon Balas (Tepper), Gerard Cornuejols (Tepper), Alan Frieze (Math), Merrick Furst (CS), Ravi Kannan (CS), and Rick Statman (Math). Questions can be addressed to any member of the committee.

Course Requirements

The Coordinating Committee for the Ph.D. program in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization has established the following core curriculum. The order in which these courses are taken is not mandatory, but the following sequence is recommended.

Descriptions for these courses can be found here: CS. Tepper. Math.

Students will be required to pass all the above core courses, plus a comprehensive qualifying examination on the Tepper core courses at the end of the third semester. In addition, the students must pass:

and one of the following Computer Science courses:

In the event that a student has already mastered a core course at the graduate level when entering the program, another course from the same department may be substituted. Approval must be obtained from the Coordinating Committee and is given on a case-by-case basis.

Students must also choose an area of concentration and take at least two (2) one semester courses in it. Some examples of the courses that have been offered in the past, besides the core courses, are: dynamic programming, combinatorial optimization, matroid theory, location theory, sequencing and scheduling, large scale OR, parallel algorithms, geometry of numbers, nonlinear programming, combinatorial packing and covering, optimization methods for logical inference. The students are expected to have satisfied all course requirements by the end of the fifth semester.

Research and Other Requirements

During their residence at Carnegie Mellon, students in the Ph.D. program in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization are expected to participate in the weekly research seminar on Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization.

At the end of the third semester, students should choose a faculty member to supervise their dissertation. Throughout this period, they will be subject to an annual review. The Coordinating committee will judge whether the thesis work is proceeding satisfactorily. Approximately a year before the expected graduation date, students must make a thesis proposal before a thesis committee, composed of the advisor and two or more faculty members of the student's choosing. The final transition point is the thesis defense, which is presented before the same committee.

To graduate, students will need some teaching experience, and all students must demonstrate programming skills. (For every student, a faculty member, approved by the student's advisor, would attest that the student has adequately demonstrated programming skills.)


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