This is an archived copy of the 2020-21 catalog. To access the most recent version of the catalog, please visit http://catalog.utexas.edu/.

Computer Science

Master of Science in Computer Science
Doctor of Philosophy

For More Information

Campus address: Gates Dell Complex (GDC) 2.702, phone (512) 232-7407, fax (512) 471-8885; campus mail code: D9500

Mailing address: The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Computer Science, 2317 Speedway D9500, Austin, TX 78712

E-mail: csadmis@cs.utexas.edu

URL: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/

Facilities for Graduate Work

To provide the most advanced resources for teaching and research, the Department of Computer Science manages its own network and system of more than 1,000 hosts.

A staff of 13, under the direction of the department chair, specifies, buys, installs, and maintains this computing infrastructure. Through accounts on the department's UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh workstations, students, faculty members, and staff have access to public laboratories and private equipment.

Many different computer systems are available for research use by faculty members and students in the department. The department operates a general-purpose high-throughput computing (HTC) Linux cluster with over 2,000 cores, Dell PowerEdge checkpoint servers, 60 nVidia GPUs of various types, and a NetApp FAS3270 storage server with 24 terabytes. This cluster, as well as all public computing resources, are available to everyone via HTCondor, a resource management tool for widely distributed systems. There are several hundred Linux machines in public labs, and there are over 100 linux boxes on graduate desks. Several hundred other workstations of varying configurations and platforms are located in private research labs or on researchers' desks.

All departmental computers are networked together using one or 10 Gigabits per second Ethernet. The network, managed and maintained by staff, consists of over 100 Cisco switches, with a Cisco 6513 serving as its point of presence and firewall. Network servers include the research dedicated NetApp FAS3270 with 26 terabytes of storage and a NetApp FAS3270 with 50 terabytes of RAIDed disk that is used for home directory service, as well as many other file servers, print servers, and communications servers.

Areas of Study

Graduate study in computer science is offered in the following areas: analysis of algorithms; artificial intelligence; automated reasoning; communication protocols; compilers; computational biology; computational complexity; computational visualization; computer architecture; computer graphics; computer networks; computer vision; cryptography; data mining; database management; distributed systems; fault-tolerant computing; formal methods; machine learning; mathematical software; mobile and ad hoc networks; natural language processing; neural networks; numerical analysis; operating systems; parallel programming; programming language design and implementation; randomized algorithms; real-time systems; robotics; scientific computing; secure computing; software construction from components; system modeling; theoretical computer science; and wireless networks.

Graduate Studies Committee

The following faculty members served on the Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) in the spring 2020 semester.


Scott J Aaronson
Lorenzo Alvisi
Chandrajit L Bajaj
Dana Harry Ballard
Don S Batory
George Biros
Joydeep Biswas
Alan C Bovik
Constantine Caramanis
William R Cook
Inderjit S Dhillon
Isil Dillig
Georgios-Alex Dimakis
Gregory C Durrett
Katrin E Erk
Donald S Fussell
Anna Gal
Joydeep Ghosh
Milos Gligoric
Mohamed G Gouda
Kristen L Grauman
Danna Gurari
Qixing Huang
Warren A Hunt Jr
Alexander Huth
Adam Richard Klivans
Philipp Kraehenbuehl
Matthew Alan Lease
MIN KYUNG LEE
Calvin Lin
Qiang Liu
Risto P Miikkulainen
Daniel P Miranker
Aloysius K Mok
Raymond J Mooney
Dana Hadar Moshkovitz aaronson
Scott David Niekum
Evdokia Nikolova
Gordon S Novak Jr
Simon Peter
Keshav K Pingali
C Greg Plaxton
Bruce W Porter
William H Press
Eric Price
Lili Qiu
Vijaya Ramachandran
Christopher J Rossbach
Sujay Sanghavi
Purnamrita Sarkar
James G Scott
Hovav Shacham
David Soloveichik
Peter H Stone
Andrea Lockerd Thomaz
Ufuk Topcu
Robert A Van De Geijn
Vijaychidambaram Velayudhan Pillai
Paul Etienne Vouga
Brent R Waters
Andrew B Whinston
Emmett Witchel
David I Zuckerman

Admission Requirements

Most entering graduate students have degrees in computer science. Students with degrees in other areas may be considered for admission; if admitted, they may be required to take undergraduate courses in computer science, without credit toward a graduate degree, to satisfy background requirements.