Intelligent Systems, PhD

Requirements for the PhD

The student’s adviser must be a member of the ISP faculty. New students are generally assigned to the ISP Director for their first year in the program.

To obtain a degree, a student must be in good standing and at full student status (not provisional). To remain in good standing, a student must make sufficient progress on their degree requirements and attend all but two (2) of the scheduled AI Forum talks per term. In case of extenuating circumstances, the student should communicate the possible absence to the ISP director and administrator. Failure to meet this requirement may affect application for various fellowship candidacies, GSA positions, travel grants and other internal opportunities.

Students pursuing the Doctor of Philosophy degree in ISP must adhere to the SCI requirements for graduation and complete a minimum of 72 credits as outlined below. Students must earn a grade of B- or better in each of the courses in the appropriate ISP curriculum (the general track or the Biomedical Informatics track) and maintain a GPA of at least 3.0

Course Requirements

Students are expected to have the pre-requisites needed to take the courses necessary to obtain the PhD degree in ISP. These may be required if not already taken.

*Approved Advanced Courses

• If the student enrolled in a class section combined with any of the following, the combined class section is also approved as an advanced course. Students should strive to enroll in the ISSP offering whenever possible.

   

• ISSP 2015 - FOUNDATIONS OF CLINICAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS
• ISSP 2017 - FOUNDATIONS OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS 2
• ISSP 2130 - INFORMATION STORAGE & RETRIEVAL
• ISSP 2170 - MACHINE LEARNING
• ISSP 2180 - COMPUTER VISION
• ISSP 2221 - HUMAN INFORMATION PROCESSING
• ISSP 2230 - INTRO NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCSSNG
• ISSP 2240 - DECISION ANAL & DECISN SUPRT SYS
• ISSP 2280 - ADAPTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
• ISSP 2430 - SOCIAL COMPUTING
• ISSP 3120 - ADV TOPCS NATURAL LANG PROCSSNG
• ISSP 3535 - ADV TOPICS IN MACHINE LEARNING
• ISSP 3565 - ADV TOPICS ARTIFICIAL INTELLGNC

PhD Preliminary Examination

For this requirement, the student must complete a research project, approved by the student’s preliminary evaluation committee, involving (1) significant research, design, or development work, (2) a written report, and (3) an oral presentation. Students must form a preliminary evaluation committee (PhD) consisting of three faculty members, two of whom must be ISP faculty. The student’s adviser chairs the committee, and must be an ISP faculty member.

Preferably, the research project is completed by the end of the summer term of the second year. Students who have not defended their research project by end of the fall term of their third year in the program will be placed on provisional status in the program, unless extenuating circumstances warrant an extension. 

Although not a requirement, it is strongly suggested that the student submit the project report for publication in a refereed journal or conference. Thus, the scope of the research project is intended to be at the level of a paper that is of publishable quality in a peer-reviewed AI journal or conference.

The steps to completing the project are as follows:

• Submit a project proposal to your committee for its approval.
• Perform the work, and write a project report.
• Submit your project report to your committee at least two weeks in advance of your oral presentation of the work.
• Present your work in a talk given to your committee. As a guideline, you should give about a 30-minute talk and leave about 30 minutes for questions and discussion. The ISP faculty should be invited to the oral presentation. General questions relating to the field of AI are appropriate at this examination. The oral presentation may take place in an open forum, such as the ISP AI Forum, followed by a closed session with just your committee and any other ISP faculty members who wish to be present.

The committee will evaluate the project and presentation. The following criteria should be considered: The project and presentation should represent independent research, design, or development work. They should be technically sound and relevant to the ISP. The student should display breadth of knowledge as well as understanding of the significance and motivation of the work. The committee will combine that evaluation with a review of the student’s progress in coursework to arrive at an overall assessment.

• Pass at the PhD level.
• Provisional pass at the PhD level: Must complete additional requirements specified by the committee in order to obtain a pass.
• Pass at the MS level: Student obtains a terminal MS degree, once all course requirements for the MS are completed.
• Fail.

Students who pass will need to have the Report on Examinations form signed by their committee. This form is launched by the ISP Administrator. Should you have difficulty finding what you need, please contact the ISP administrator.

PhD Comprehensive Examination

For the PhD comprehensive examination, students should follow these steps:

Form a comprehensive examination committee consisting of at least three faculty members, two of whom must be ISP faculty. The student’s PhD adviser chairs the committee and must be an ISP faculty member. The faculty on a given student’s comprehensive examination committee are often the same as the faculty on that student’s preliminary evaluation committee, but they need not be. Choose three major subareas of AI. One of these areas is flexible; the other two should be chosen from the ISP list of sub-areas below. The flexible area must be unanimously approved by the student’s committee (but does not need to be approved by the director). Biomedical Informatics students should choose “Biomedical Informatics” as one of the subareas.

• AI and Business/Accounting
• AI and Law
• AI and Medicine
• AI and MIS
• Bioinformatics
• Case-based Reasoning
• Cognitive Architectures (or Subsymbolic Approaches)
• Connectionist Approaches
• Statistics and Evaluation Methods
• Expert Systems
• Intelligent Interfaces
• Intelligent Tutoring Systems
• Knowledge Representation
• Machine Learning
• Biomedical Informatics
• Natural-language Processing
• Planning
• Reasoning About Uncertainty
• Robotics
• Vision

Work with the committee to finalize the reading for the three chosen subareas. Have the committee approve the list. 

Work with your committee members to set the following dates for the examination: 

• The date and time the written examination is distributed to you.
• The date and time you return the examination, which by default is nine days after receiving it. Your committee can designate an examination period of fewer or more than nine days, and through your adviser you may request that they do so.
• The date and time you orally defend your examination answers before your committee. You should schedule two hours for your oral exam defense, although typically less time will be needed.

Your committee will provide a list of written questions. Unless an exception is made by your committee, you will have nine days to provide the written answers to these questions. At the end of those nine days, you should distribute your answers to each of your committee members. Be sure to check that each has received your answers.

An oral examination will take place after the comprehensive committee has read your answers; the committee should be given a minimum of three days to read your answers before the oral examination. Only the ISP faculty will be invited to the oral examination. You will be asked questions by your committee concerning your answers on the written examination, and more broadly about  your knowledge of the material in the three areas of concentration you have chosen.

At the end of your oral examination, your committee will evaluate your performance as one of the following:

• Pass. 
• Provisional pass: Must complete additional requirements specified by the committee in order to obtain a pass. 
• Fail. 

An evaluation by the comprehensive examination committee of “fail” will be considered by the ISP faculty at large, who will make a determination about the status of the student in the ISP, including whether the student is allowed to re-take the examination or whether he or she is terminated from the program.

Students who pass will need to have the Report on Examinations form signed by their committee. This form is launched by the ISP Administrator. After completing the exam, students should email the list of their committee members, their email addresses, and the date they passed their exam to the ISP Administrator. All paperwork concerning courses, graduation, and milestones etc. can be found on the School Forms section of the SCI Current Students webpage. Should you have difficulty finding what you need, please contact the ISP administrator.

PhD Dissertation

PhD dissertation is the crown jewel of your PhD study. The work on the Dissertation includes five major steps, which are reviewed in more detail below. Each step has to be documented and might have one or more associated deadlines that you need to observe.

1. Find a dissertation adviser and fom a dissertation committee. Your disseration committee should be submitted for approval by the program director and the Associate Dead of Graduate Studies. See the Doctoral Dissertation Committee section below for more details.
2. Write a dissertation proposal. Present the proposal to your committee. Your committee must approve your proposal and sign off on the Admission to Candidacy form. See the Written Dissertation Proposal (Admission to Candidacy) section below for additional details. After the approval of your proposal (also known as admission to candidacy), you become a PhD candidate.
3. Carry out the research. Write the dissertation. Submit your dissertation to your committee members.
4. Present your dissertation at the public oral defense. Your committee must approve your defense and sign the Report on Examination form launched by the ISP Administrator. On the basis of the examination of your written thesis and the oral defense, the committee members might request changes to the text of your dissertation.
5. Prepare the final version of your thesis (implementing changes, if requested) and submit it to the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) for archival. Please refer to the Finalizing and Submitting Your Dissertation section below for details.

The student must meet with their entire dissertation committee at least once per year during the time in which the research is being done.  The student will also be meeting regularly with their advisor or co-advisors.

Credit for doctoral research is ordinarily obtained through the course ISSP 3000  - RESEARCH AND DISSERTATION PHD. Students who have completed all course requirements, passed the PhD comprehensive examination, completed 72 credits of graduate studies, and are working full-time on preparation of their dissertations are required to register for Full-time Dissertation Study (FTDJ 0000). This is a zero credit non-graded course. It is considered full-time while students are working on their dissertation. It will say “in-progress” on their AARs until they finish their entire dissertation process.

Doctoral Dissertation Committee

Doctoral dissertation committees are composed of four members, all of whom must be current members of the Graduate Faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. There must be three Graduate Faculty members from the candidate’s department (“internal members”) and at least one Graduate Faculty member external to the candidate’s department (“external member”). The committee must be approved by the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at least 5 weeks before the thesis proposal/prospectus meeting or defense.

Contact the ISP Administrator to submit the Committee Approval Form on your behalf. Please include the CV of any external members and a memo justifying their participation on the committee (i.e., special expertise in a particular field). The Associate Dean will review the material and ither approve or reject the proposed external member. It must be understood by the external member that they are required to be present in person at both the thesis proposal/prospectus/overview meeting and the defense of the dissertation at their own expense. Any exceptions to this attendance rule must be approved by the Associate Dean in advance. All committee members are required to be physically present at both the thesis proposal/prospectus/overview meeting and the defense. In special circumstances, a committee member may request to participate remotely at either the overview or defense but cannot participate remotely in both. Only the Associate Dean can approve remote participation from one of the two required meetings (overview or defense). Please contact the ISP Administrator to initiate this form.

Any changes to the committee after the thesis proposal/prospectus/overview meeting must also be approved by the Associate Dean before the defense. Contact the ISP Administrator if changes need to be made to the committee.

Written Dissertation Proposal (Admission to Candidacy)

The dissertation proposal is essentially a plan of your research on completing your dissertation work. The proposal has to be prepared in a written form, submitted to your committee for examination and defended orally at the Proposal Defense in front of your committee. Your committee must approve your proposal once finalized. You will need to meet with the ISP Administrator to submit the appropriate paperwork after the defense. Please contact the ISP Administrator to coordinate the meeting.

The announcement of your Proposal Defense must appear in the University Times, SCI calendar and University calendar. The student must first decide on a date and time for their Proposal Defense and reserve a room. Contact Jessica Ham to book the room. Contact Jessica Ham to book the room. After a date, time and room are established, then the student must complete the Defense Announcement form. This must be done at least four week prior to the defense date. The day after the propsal defense is completed, please contact the ISP Administrator to complete the appropriate paperwork.

Final Oral and Written Examination (Dissertation Defense)

Upon completion of the dissertation research, the student prepare a written dissertation and, in consultation with their dissertation committee, schedules a public oral defense. The standard format for defending a dissertation is a public oral presentation of the research, followed by questions from teh dissertation committee and the general audience. Only the dissertation committee will vote on the result. If the outcome is not unanimous, the case is referred to the Dean for resolution.

The student must decide on a date and time and reserve a room. This is the student’s responsibility. The student can contact Jessica Ham to book the room. After the student establishes the date, time, and the room.

At least 5 weeks before the oral defense, determine if you need to make changs to your committee members. If any members are changing, then a Committee Approval form will need to be  completed on your behalf. Contact the ISP Administrator and they will assist with this form. The written thesis must be submitted to the Dissertation Committee for examination for at least 4 weeks before the oral defense.

The oral defense is public and open to all member of the University community. Students must complete the Defense Announcement form at least four weeks prior to the scheduled oral defense date to allow sufficient time to publish the defense in the University Times.

After your defense, please let the ISP Administrator know if you passed the oral and written part, or just the oral part, so that the ISP Administrator can do the Report on Examinations form on your behalf. Please include the list of committee members and their email addresses in the email to the Administrator.

Finalizing and Submitting your Dissertation

It is the responsibility of the student’s advisor or co-advisors to ensure that the dissertation is in final form before requesting signatures of all committee members. After the final oral examination is successfully completed, the student must submit their theses or dissertation electronically. Check the graduation procedures website to see what you will need to submit for the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD).

**MAKE SURE YOU DO YOUR ETD PAPERWORK AND APPLY FOR GRADUATION