The PhD program emphasizes preparation for research, teaching, and scholarly endeavor in academic settings or private, industrial, or governmental laboratories. It is a flexible program welcoming students with a broad range of research interests within informatics including, but not limited to: bioinformatics and computational biology, geoinformatics, health informatics, human-computer interaction, and information science. It requires completion of a minimum number of semester hours of coursework, satisfactory performance on the qualifying, comprehensive, and proposal exams, and the production and formal defense of a dissertation describing original research results. The requirements described here are in addition to the University-wide requirements for the PhD degree described in the Manual of Rules and Regulations of the Graduate College, Section XII.
The Ph.D. in informatics requires a total of 72 semester hours beyond the bachelor’s degree. A total of 19 semester hours of core courses are required, with an additional 12 semester hours of courses approved by the student’s committee. The remaining semester hours are typically dedicated to dissertation research. Students should use the core courses plan of study worksheet and the supplement worksheet for additional PhD requirements to track their progress and plan ahead.