Computer Science Graduate Program Webinar

Thank you welcome everyone for thank you so much for joining us today. I will give it a minute just in case anyone's a little slow to log on and then will begin shortly.

Get started, welcome everyone and thank you once again for joining us today. My name is Molly Mcandrews, the assistant director of admissions for graduate recruitment and here to present are there. I'm here to introduce our two presenters today. I have professor bill half from the computer science Department and Dorothy changes the graduate program manager for computer science. Without further ado, I will hand it over to you guys and let you take it away. Thank you.

Thanks Molly, Yes as she mentioned, my name is bill. Half I'm an associate professor here in the computer science Department and I'm going to tell you about our Department and the graduate program in particular, and the kinds of research we do. And Molly, I'll say next, and Molly will advance the slide for me so next so I know a lot of you are considering going to Graduate School in particular two minds.

Um Ann, I just wanted to just really briefly outline some reasons why this is a good idea. So Graduate School is a chance to learn more about your field, like the frontiers of knowledge, and be able to expand them by working with faculty. It's a chance to become a researcher to think beyond your classes, to ask important questions, find the answers, and communicate your ideas.

And it's a chance to interact with students. Faculty here post post doctoral researchers, etc.

And often our students travel to conferences, workshops to visit collaborators, and things like that. I say I'm more practical side Graduate School is a way for you to kind of.

Get job security you know. So as as things change in the future, you're more able to adapt to those changes. It also provides you more interesting work next.

So why would you go to Graduate School in computer science? Well, I mean, yeah, I probably don't have to sell you on this, but computer science is kind of where it's at. You know, in terms of research, innovations in the world that's driving our world today. Computer science innovations comprise most of the top innervation innovations, and it's also a great career as far as satisfaction and happiness. You know a number of sites, including Money Magazine, US news, and World Report.

Have listed the best jobs in the country. An number one is software developer you know. And then there are other computer science categories in the top 10 or the top 20. So in terms of good pay, growth prospects, quality of life, creativity, it's a great career next.

So just to outline some of the career possibilities that our students have taken advantage of, here are some of the companies that they've been employed at. Our Masters graduates in the last year.

Um, so quite a few in the high tech area including Google Plus One robotics. I know we play some at Amazon.

Uh, and then quite a few electronics, oil and gas, aerospace and consulting so average starting salary was 92,000 and I think a PhD is well over 100,000. I forget the exact numbers, so good career possibilities for our grad students next.

So OK, given you want to go to Graduate School in computer science, why come to my? Well, I mentioned the outstanding career outcomes. And there's also exciting research possibilities, which I'll talk about in a few minutes. But computer science at minds is really.

Emphasizes the establishing a sense of community, so we help the students build relationships with each other or what the faculty.

And the outside community, including K through 12 and the professional community. So things like you know events, we have a game night for faculty and grad students. You know, there're lunches, of course, professional seminars and things like that. So we want you to feel like you're part of the community.

In addition, of course we have student professional student organizations like ACM and a industry consortium called C map, and that's a consortium of about 20 or 30 companies that support the Department through financial gifts to establish fellowships, scholarships, and also they come in to recruit and.

Information seminars and professional seminars and things like that. So it's a great way to do networking next.

So how big is the is the Department?

We have just over 100 grad students last year and total of 18 faculty and next year. That number is growing. I know we hired at least three faculty that will start next year. I don't know the graduate student numbers though.

Um, we have three overlapping research focus areas that I'll describe in a minute, and the faculty work in one or more of those research areas.

Oh, that picture, by the way, is, uh, is basically the school of mines. It's at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, so it's a great location for recreation. You know, you're really just very close to ski areas, hiking, and then Denver is also very close, so it's an ideal location and very beautiful next.

So I'm going to let some students tell you in their own words about the Department. These are current and former graduate students. We asked them to just.

Shoot a video of themselves saying what they, why they came to mines and what they liked about it, so Molly could you switch over to the video?

Well, thank you, uh Mona Jose, an none.

As you heard, they are involved with faculty research as well as teaching, so that's definitely an opportunity that you can have. If you can come. If you come to mind.

What I'd like to do is talk about, uh, research. Now the faculty are involved at that, but you can get involved at and please reach out to these professors if you're interested. So, as I mentioned, they have we have three overlapping research areas. Excuse me, called intelligence, so that would be artificial intelligence, machine learning, human robot interaction, natural language.

Understanding things like that.

Another one is algorithms, so those are classical algorithms, data structures, game theory, as well as applications of those things.

We have an area called systems which would include high performance computing, programming languages, cyber security and networking, and kind of overarching all of these areas is CS, computer science education. So we have faculty that do research in education and.

Bring those concepts into basically all of our teaching and research. So yeah, let me go ahead and next.

Yeah, let me talk a little bit about the possible degree programs that you could have as a graduate student in computer science. So one is a Master of Science non thesis.

And this typically takes 1 to 1 1/2 years, so the requirements are 30 coursework credits, 33 course hours.

Um, an I'll talk about the requirements for the courses in just a minute. Sort of a different. A slightly different flavor of that non thesis option is to do a what we call a Masters project. So in that case you would do 24 hours of course work and six research credits. So you can think of the project is kind of a mini thesis.

Do independent research in advised by a faculty member, and then there's a small committee, namely two people that you present your research too.

Another program is the Master of Science thesis, and this takes typically one and half two years. So here you have 21 course work hours in nine research credits, so again a total of 30 hours, but nine of these. Now our research credits to work on your thesis, so the thesis option is a more in depth research project in.

Cooperation with your faculty member. Typically the thesis is published in a conference and you have the opportunity to present that and travel to a conference, and then the third program that we have is the Doctor of philosophy, or PhD. This takes four to five years. Depends on how the research goes.

Here we have 72 total credit hour requirement and 19 of those minimum must be coursework.

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OK, So what UM courses do you need to?

Applied to the Graduate School to have to enter the graduate program. So we consider these undergraduate courses as prerequisites. Prerequisite knowledge. You know either taking these or the equivalent somewhere else, so these are programming concepts, so this would be introduction to programming.

You know, loops, uh. Things like that recursion.

We've got data structures and then software engineering.

Computer organization or computer architecture and discrete mathematics. So if you don't have these courses, you can still apply, but you would be. Your application might be provisional in the sense that the committee would say, yeah, you're you can come into the program, but you have to take this as a prerequisite class while you're here and then you can move from the provisional status to their regular status.

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So what required courses we have? We have four required courses for all degrees. That's the Masters and PhD degrees and that is algorithms. An operating systems. So these are actually senior level courses that are offered every semester.

We have two graduate courses, theory of computation, an advanced computer architecture, so the remaining credits basically electives that you decide appan in.

With the advice of your advisor. So for the non thesis you would have 18 additional elective hours. The non thesis project you would have 12 hours. This is 9 hours and so forth.

Oh, I should have mentioned, uhm, I don't know if there's any participants here that are currently minds undergraduates. If that's the case, we allow you to double count those two courses algorithms an operating system. So in that case, you.

You can get credit for those. As for your undergraduate degree as well as your graduate degree, so it gets you through faster.

But you know, if you have any. If there are people like that and have questions about it, please please let us know.

Uh, next?

OK so I have some time here, uhm?

I'll go through really quickly some of the research that's going on in the Department. I have a couple slides from each faculty member, but please feel free to reach out to.

Individual faculty members.

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so professor Bellevue Ronnie is in our systems area and does high performance computing. So basically, how do you speed up computers and algorithms that run on computers? They particularly works on compilers, an programming languages that take advantage of the latest hardware architectures next.

So yeah, so he his research interests include heterogeneous architectures, performance modeling, an systems, organizations for the latest machine learning algorithms.

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professor Hahn is in our networking area and she develops algorithms and protocols for communication of mobile systems including swarm robotics, mobile computing, networked augmented reality, next.

So good example might be uhm.

Communication in things like our underground mine, so computer or our school has a teaching mine up in the mountains that is used for research and teaching. So we send robots in there to basically do mapping look for.

Do research, for example for first responders and she would.

Study how those robots can communicate with each other in a challenging environment like that next.

Tom Williams is in our robotics, an intelligence area, and his specialty is human robot communication, namely how you communicate with the robot, how the robot communicates with you using, let's say, natural language and gestures next.

So very interesting area that.

Is is becoming more and more important is how you how you communicate naturally with the robot, with all the ambiguities of human language.

And Vice Versa, and also includes all augmented reality. How you display things and use gestures to communicate with robots next.

Professor Dan TEM is also in our robotics area and he studies planning and control.

For example, how do you?

To compute the optimal path or test sequence for a robot to perform a task so next.

Yeah, he gets into geometric reasoning, like how you plan your path through obstacles, how you plan the sequence of tasks performed.

Even task and you know, even including things like communication, how do you? How do you position yourself to allow yourself to communicate next?

Professor is an also in the robotics area. His areas include human centered robotics, working with robots as well as 3D perception. For example, how you map out an area in challenging environments such as search and rescue next.

So the mapping for example uses a lot of computer vision on how you recognize where you are from.

Say from one day to the next or one season to the next, where the appearance can change quite a bit, and recognizing objects for manipulation such as like this Amazon picking challenge.

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Professor Yang is in our algorithms area. He works quite a bit with games theory and networking next.

So for example, how you how you often just ate yourself? How you would detect theft of a smartphone and speech privacy prevention?

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Professor Mehta is also in our algorithms area with applications. Two large graphs like graph theory, Cam informatics, so that is.

Studying large molecules and how you?

Algorithms revolving around that, as well as building energy management.

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and his.

Oh yeah, so he studies applications. As I mentioned in these areas of cheminformatics and big data and graph Analytics.

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this is main. I do research an augmented reality and computer vision. So augmented reality you've probably heard of virtual reality.

Well, augmented reality is basically augmenting the real world with graphics that are registered to the real world. For example labels, arrows, things like that. So very useful for things like task planning. I'm sorry, not test point like operating equipment or maintaining equipment. Things like that. So I use a lot of computer vision for that.

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and I've also done work in activity recognition, people detection, robotics localization and mapping, and 3D Reconstruction.

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are Tracy Camp is our Department head and her research area is in networking and applied machine learning and she is also very active in computer science education and has quite a few awards and in these areas.

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Professor Gray is in our cyber security area, so basically he studies.

Algorithms to?

You know, detect hackers and.

How you how you keep things secure?

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and he has established a National Center of academic excellence in cyber defense area. That is, you know.

Was designated as a as a center by the Department of Homeland Security, so we also have a certificate program where students can come in and get a certificate which is not quite a Masters degree, but it's a concentration in the cyber security area, so very prestigious. Next professor Wood is in our systems area and his research area.

Is in high performance computing.

So again, algorithms and compilers that will take advantage of.

Highly paralyzed computers and processors next.

Yeah, including.

Algorithms to todo approximate computing and also how to take advantage of GPUs or graphics processing units to map the algorithms to run in highly parallelized form on those next?

And Professor Wong is in our machine learning area. He does quite a bit of both theoretical and applied research in areas such as chemical informatics, medical imaging and Bioinformatics, computer vision next.

So things like structured sparse learning how you take some large data and represent it using sparse features.

Yeah, and transfer learning how you how you transfer a learned model from one domain to another without having to retrain everything so he's very successful in these areas. So all of these faculty that I mentioned, very active in research get quite a few grants. So if you are interested in any of these areas, please reach out to them.

Uhm, you know they they basically directly hire research assistants, whereas the Department would hunger teaching assistants.

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OK, so I think I'll stop here and let Dorothy take over talking about the admissions process, an support for grad students. So Dorothy.

Thank you hi everyone, I'm also wanna remind you that if you have any questions you can place them in the chat. We have maybe 4 slides left before will open it up to answer questions so I know that finances is a really important part of your decision about where you're going to attend Graduate School. Want to talk a little about ways that the computer science Department supports our incoming students so we have for a non thesis students.

We employ a lot of non piece of students and hourly positions so you can help out with classes with grading even as instructors and teaching some courses as you heard from the students in our video for thesis based students we have teaching and research assistantships available. So those assistantships provide full tuition health insurance. They pay all your school fees and they also provide a living stipend.

For the assistantship possessions, we expect students to work up to 20 hours a week during the academic year, so that's fall and Spring Semesters and then up to 40 hours a week over the summer. So additional forms of support can include fellowships from independent funds, a lot of students have external fellowships or their own scholarships coming into minds. And then we also have support from all the amazing resources an the CS Department, so excellent staff and faculty to advise and mentor you.

Your Thesis Committee to help guide you through your research next.

So here is the cost of attendance. These are the numbers for the 2019 twenty academic year and it was just announced a few days ago that are tuition will stay the same for the 2021 academic year. Usually tuition is at each summer for the following academic year, so we do have different tuition rates for Colorado residents and nonresidents that you can see here. The good news is that if you are a full time student taking between 9 to 15 credits passed the same cost, so 9 credits is 3 classes.

15 credits would be 5 glasses. Most of our students will take between three and four classes each term.

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so a little bit of information about the application process and this is our last slide, so again, you can get those questions in. We are still accepting applications for fall 2020, so for those of you interested in applying to the non thesis Masters program, the final application deadline for fall 2020 is July 15th. If you're interested in applying to it these space degree, the deadline is July 1st for fall 2020. If you're looking at admission for.

A spring 21 or the following fall. Those applications are open as well. If you are interested in a thesis based program and seeking funding so it teaching a research assistantship, we have a priority deadline of January 5th for fall 2021 admission.

The application is pretty easy to submit. You can see the link to the graduate admissions office at the bottom of the slide. You have to fill out the application form, submit a personal statement, resume 3 letters of recommendation, jirari test scores and international applicants also have to show English proficiency.

Uh, in a resume and transcripts from all of the institutions you have attended, you can see our admissions requirements on this slide, so these are really are minimum admissions requirements to be a very competitive applicant, you would want to exceed these admission requirements, so that is a bachelors degree with a GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale meeting. The prerequisite course requirements at Doctor Half presented jirari scores, so we're looking for competitive scores across the board.

And in particular, quantitative section score of 151 or higher. And then, if you're interested in the PhD program, prior research experience is preferred, but it's not required.

Next slide.

Is just our contact information. So if you have other questions going forward you think of something after this presentation, please feel free to reach out to doctor hoffer myself with those questions.

So I see we do have a question in the chat. Our engineering students with non CS backgrounds eligible for our ATA positions in the minds PhD program appan admission.

Yeah, so definitely research assistantships are determined by the faculty member who has the grant and directly hires that student. So yes, definitely, that would be possible for a faculty member to hire a student with a non CS background.

Um, in fact, I think I've done that myself in the best teaching assistantships. Like I said, are determined by the Department. In fact, I think it's like the Graduate Committee. So what we do there is, we reach out to the faculty and say, Hey, these students are interested in entering the graduate program and applying for a teaching assistantship. Are any of these? Are any of you interested?

Yeah, potentially advising the student in the future, so we want to make sure if you're hired as a teaching assistant that you have a good path to moving to a research assistantship, meaning that you're going to find an advisor that is willing to advise you and ultimately fund you.

So yeah, so if we if we had a faculty member that said yes, I really like this student with a non CS background. An confident that this student will get the prerequisite if they need to take prerequisite courses.

You know, I'm if that's happening. I'm willing to advise and fund them in the future. Then yeah, that would be a strong candidate for a teaching assistantship position. So I guess the answer is yes.

And I would encourage you if you're interested in a thesis based program, and especially in assistantship. Um, look over our CSS website on the faculty profiles there and you can feel free to email faculty that you're interested in working with to start to build that relationship before you apply.

So a student asked, asked, have not taken any computer programming classes, but I do have lots of experience programming and I was wondering if I still need to meet the requirement for introduction to programming classes.

So for those prerequisite courses, will evaluate your the transcripts that you submit with your application, and if we don't see the prerequisite courses on there, you'll get a letter that says these. The courses that you're missing. And here are three ways that you can meet are prerequisite requirements. So one way is to take the classes at minds. Another way is to appeal the decision and basically write an appeal letter to the graduate committee that has more details about your previous experience.

Descriptions of projects you've done that would be equivalent to those classes, or the 3rd way is to request a challenge test out of those classes, so those challenge tests would be offered, typically right at the beginning of the semester that you would start an you would.

Basically, take the final for the class to make sure that you have all the knowledge that's covered there, so you'd be able to decide and will work with you on the best way to meet those prerequisites.

Any other questions?

Well, if there aren't any other questions at the moment you have our contact information and you can feel free to email us as those questions come up doctor half do you have any final words?

No, just, uh, thank you all for coming up. We are looking forward to your applications and hope you come here.

Thanks.