Computer Science and Engineering

Master's and Doctoral Degree Programs

Graduate opportunities

Where will your graduate studies take you in the future? Will you break new ground in artificial intelligence, computer security – or something entirely new?

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering offers course work leading to Master of Science degrees in Computer Science or Computer Engineering and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Computer Science and Engineering.

Our department is constantly assessing degree programs with an eye on tomorrow’s marketplace. You can choose from a variety of courses and research areas ranging from software engineering to engineering of energy efficient computer systems.

The College of Engineering is a pioneer in developing project-oriented curricula that allow you to apply knowledge in real-world situations. With small class sizes, you will work closely with distinguished faculty members to solve complex problems faced by businesses and consumers. You also can take advantage of the many research relationships we have with leading companies.

Faculty research

UNT is committed to excellence in teaching and the discovery and application of knowledge through research and creative activities. We invest in programs, infrastructure and leading faculty members who partner with students on many unique research projects.

For example, Professor Ram Dantu has received several National Science Foundation research grants for his work in wireless networks, network security and security in Voice and Video over IP. Professor Krishna Kavi received the 2012 Tech Titan of the Future award for his work in educating students in net-centric software and systems. Associate Professor Rada Mihalcea earned the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her research on understanding the meaning of text.

Research centers and laboratories

Classes and research are conducted at Discovery Park, a 300-acre research facility located four miles north of the main campus. In addition to instructional facilities with cutting-edge equipment, the department supports numerous centers and research laboratories that offer unlimited possibilities for study and research.

Several labs are dedicated to special projects such as embedded systems, computer security, game programming and sensor networks. Departmental facilities include a cluster of Intel-based machines running Linux.

Research centers

The Center for Computational Epidemiology and Response Analysis applies computational science paradigms to public health, providing tools for epidemiologists and public health researchers.

The Center for Information and Computer Security has helped UNT earn the “Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research and Education” designation from the National Security Agency. The designation places UNT among the nation’s top institutions in computer security.

The Net-Centric Software and Systems Center explores the development, verification and validation of applications and systems for net-centric and cloud systems to ensure the applications and services meet service level agreements including response time, reliability and security.

Research labs

The Bioinformatics Laboratory conducts research on developing databases and analysis tools for genomics and other research areas in life sciences.

The Computational Epidemiology Research Laboratory applies computational science paradigms to public health, providing tools for epidemiologists and public health researchers.

The Computer Systems Research Laboratory researches multithreaded and multicore architectures for embedded and high-performance applications. This includes work in processing architectures, memory systems, cache memories and software tools to utilize the capabilities of underlying hardware systems and in developing hardware and software solutions to improve performance, reduce energy consumption and prevent security breaches.

The Computer Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory examines the theories of machine learning for processing complex data and to develop applications in medicine, geo-information, etc. Research focuses on algorithm innovation and hardware integration, including computer vision, pattern recognition, data mining and artificial intelligence.

The Dependable Computing Systems Lab researches failure modeling, failure management, adaptive failure resilience, failure-aware resource management and power-aware dependable computing. The lab conducts research to develop highly dependable and energy-efficient distributed and cloud computing systems.

The Geometric Computing Laboratory works to improve the theoretical efficiency of algorithms with a particular focus on geometric problems.

The Global Software Development Lab investigates problems related to teaching people how to work more effectively in global teams and how software and human issues interact in a computer-supported collaborative environment.

The Information Management and Knowledge Discovery Lab focuses on information processing and data mining for emerging applications, including spatial, spatio-temporal, streaming, web and sensor databases. Research and development enables the use of information technology environmental monitoring, transportation and social networking.

The Laboratory for Recreational Computing serves as a center for research, education and development in video game programming.

The Language and Information Technologies Laboratory focuses on natural language processing, information retrieval and applied machine learning. Projects cover lexical semantics, graph-based natural language processing and information retrieval and multilingual natural language processing.

The Multimedia Information Laboratory researches multimedia material processing, multimedia information extraction and multimedia information modeling and retrieval.

The NanoSystem Design Laboratory examines design and CAD for low-power high-performance nanoscale mixed-signal, mixed-discipline systems. It researches power, leakage and timing models, incorporates them in a CAD flow through optimization methodology, and demonstrates them through computational intensive applications.

The Network Security Laboratory increases general wireline and wireless network security awareness, produces skilled security specialists, and conducts research and development activities to advance wireline and wireless network security and communication.

The Software Engineering Language Lab researches software engineering techniques that improve the quality of computer language design and implementation; language design and implementation methods to facilitate development, testing and execution of well-designed software; and inferential aspects of programming languages and their synergies with logic, type theory and computational mathematics.

The Software Testing Laboratory examines new approaches that use combinatorial-based techniques.

The Trusted Secure Systems Laboratory builds computer systems architecture that provides isolated execution environment, verification mechanisms for varied trust models, trust guarantee independent of the system software, and minimal or no impact on performance.

The Wireless Sensor Laboratory strives to increase general wireless communications awareness, produce skilled wireless specialists, and conduct activities to advance wireless sensor technology.

To learn more about our research centers and labs, visit the Computer Science and Engineering website.

Attending UNT

Admission requirements

Departmental application deadlines are Jan. 15 for the fall semester and Sept. 15 for the spring semester.

M.S. degree

You must meet the admission requirements for the Toulouse Graduate School® and the following program requirements:

• Minimum 3.0 GPA in the last 60 hours of undergraduate course work
• Acceptable GRE scores
• Minimum TOEFL score of 550 on the written exam, 213 on the computer-based exam or 79 on the Internet-based test for applicants whose native language is not English and who do not have a degree from an accredited U.S. institution (A minimum IELTS level of 6.5 is also acceptable.)

An undergraduate degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering is desired. You may take leveling courses to complete necessary requirements. More information about leveling courses is available on our website.

Ph.D. degree

You must meet the admission requirements of the Toulouse Graduate School® and the following program requirements:

• Minimum 3.5 GPA
• Acceptable GRE scores
• Minimum TOEFL score of 550 on the written exam, 213 on the computer-based exam or 79 on the Internet-based test for applicants whose native language is not English and who do not have a degree from an accredited U.S. institution (A minimum IELTS level of 6.5 is also acceptable.)
• Three letters of recommendation
• Statement of purpose

An overall evaluation of your credentials will be used as a basis for admission.

Degree requirements

M.S. degree

You have two options for earning a master’s degree. The thesis option consists of 30 credit hours of course work, including 6 credit hours of thesis.

The non-thesis option consists of 36 credit hours of course work. That may include 3 credit hours of project or 6 credit hours of problem in lieu of thesis.

Leveling and internship courses do not count toward either option. You can select a specialization area in a consultation with a major professor and the graduate coordinator.

Ph.D. degree

You must complete 42 credit hours beyond the master’s degree or 72 credit hours beyond the bachelor’s degree. At least 6 credit hours should be from 6000-level courses. Enrolling in at least 9 credit hours during two long consecutive semesters or 6 credit hours in three consecutive semesters are required to meet residency requirement.

In addition to the course work, you need to find a research topic, organize and pass an oral exam related to the topic, and write and defend a dissertation to a committee of at least four faculty members.

Financial assistance

Many students receive financial support through teaching and research assistantships with the department. Application forms and deadline information for assistantships are available on our website.

Information about other financial assistance programs is on the Financial Aid website.