Students are advised to contact the program for detailed rules, as there are program guidelines, in addition to the university’s requirements, for the Ph.D. degree.
Upon admission, the student is assigned an academic advisor and together they design a Plan of Study during the first semester of the student’s Ph.D. program. A Ph.D. student without a prior M.S. degree is required to take the M.S. thesis Option to engage in research early on.
The student must satisfy the Ph.D. Qualification Requirement, which include the core breadth and core depth competency requirements. The Core breadth competency includes at least one course in each of the core Data Science areas, while the latter implies that the student must take at least two courses in two of these core areas. Only courses in which the student has obtained an A or a B grade can be used to satisfy these two competency requirements; with 4 of these 7 courses having to be an A letter grade.
In addition the Ph.D. Qualification requirement also includes the Qualifying Examination. These qualification requirements are described in the Graduate Regulations on the Data Science program website https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/data-science.
Upon successful completion of the Ph.D. qualifying requirement, the student be- comes a Data Science Ph.D. candidate. The student’s Dissertation Committee must be formed within the first year of candidacy. With approval from the Data Science Steering Committee, the student selects a research advisor. Also with approval from the Data Science Steering Committee, the student and research advisor select three additional members, at least one of whom must be from a core data science department different than that of the research advisor and at least one must be from outside of WPI. The Dissertation Committee will be responsible for approving the dissertation proposal and the final dissertation manuscript.
The Ph.D. degree requirements consist of a coursework component and a research component, which together must total at least 60 credit hours beyond the master’s degree. The coursework component consists of at least 30 coursework credits, as specified on the Data Science program website https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/data-science.
The student may also enroll for research credits, but is only allowed up to 18 research credits prior to the acceptance of the written dissertation proposal by her Dissertation Committee. With approval of the Dissertation Committee, the student applies for and takes the dissertation proposal examination, usually within one year of the Ph.D. candidacy.
The Ph.D. research component consists of at least 30 credits (including any research credits earned prior to the acceptance of the dissertation proposal and excluding any research credits applied toward a master’s degree) leading to a dissertation and a public defense, which must be approved by the student’s Dissertation Committee.