Subject Qualifying Exams

The following are the subject exams currently available in each of the main areas of Computer Science. Passing one of the subject exams in one of the research areas is necessary to satisfy the depth requirement of the PhD qualification. Please contact one of the faculty in your area of interest for more details.

The form of qualifying exam depends on the subject area, and is set by the relevant group of faculty members (see below). The exam committee typically consists of at least 3 faculty members in the subject area, chosen at the discretion of the student’s advisor. Note that later in the graduation process, a thesis defense committee will be assigned and must meet certain constraints set by GRS (see the GRS PhD Degree Requirements and CAS’s Final Oral Exam and Dissertation Draft); it is advisable for these committees to be similar.

• Algorithms
  Faculty: Bun, Ene, Homer, Klein, Raskhodnikova, Smith
• Theory
  Faculty: Bun, Gacs, Homer, Levin, Lincoln, Poremba
• Networking
  Faculty: Bestavros, Byers, Crovella, Matta
• Operating Systems
  Faculty: West, Appavoo, Krieger, Mancuso
• Programming Language
  Faculty: Kfoury, Xi, Stoughton, Gaboardi
• Artificial Intelligence
  Faculty: Gong, Ghadiyaram, Sclaroff, Saenko, Plummer, Mueller
• Graphics
  Faculty: Chien, Whiting
• Cryptography & Security
  Faculty: Canetti, Goldberg, Reyzin, Smith, Tromer, Varia
• Data Mining & Data Management
  Faculty: Athanassoulis, Kollios, Terzi, Tsourakakis

For more information, and for details regarding how the subject exam fits in the bigger picture of completing a PhD degree, you may want to check the various PhD degree milestones.​

1. Schedule a room through the CS dept. using the link below
   1. CS Room Request Form
2. Once you have the room assignement, please send the subsequent information to csphd@bu.edu to have your announcement created. After it is created it will be emailed out to the CS community.

   1. Type of exam

   2. Title

   3. Abstract

   4. Exam committee members (with titles):

   5. Date and time

   6. Room reservation (address and number)

   7. Zoom link (you create this)

   8. Headshot (Needed for Defense only)

3. Upon completion of your exam, please complete and submit the appropriate form to csphd@bu.edu. We will sign on behalf of CS DGS. From there we will forward to grsrec@bu.edu. Please find the appropriate form on the link here: GRS PhD Forms.