The FPO is taken after the candidate's dissertation has been accepted and is primarily a defense of the dissertation. Teaching experience is considered to be a significant part of graduate education. All Ph.D. candidates are required to assist with course instruction for the equivalent of two terms. Areas of Graduate Study Dissertation topics are selected through an informal matching of student interests and faculty expertise. No financial support is provided for M.E. students.
AIs are available to entering and continuing Ph.D. students.
Corporate and governmentally funded ARs provide research opportunities in one of the department's research programs and often become part of the basis of the dissertation. Assistantships generally require about 20 hours of work per week and stipend rates are fixed annually by the University. Continuation of support is contingent on satisfactory academic performance. Professor Appel is interested in the practical implementation of semantically well-founded programming languages. The main research interests of Professor Chazelle lie in the design and analysis of algorithms, computational geometry, and computer graphics.