Courses are offered in artificial intelligence, database systems, distributed and parallel systems, image processing, operating systems, programming languages, software engineering, computation on supercomputers, and theoretical computer science. Research opportunities exist in all of these areas. Graduate students have access to a number of departmental computing facilities, the engineering workstation network, and the central computing and information services. Faculty members and students collaborate extensively with individuals in other engineering disciplines and other science departments. Sedimentology, geochemistry, Quaternary geology, tectonics, oceanography, igneous and metamorphic petrology, biostratigraphy, environmental geology, and paleoecology.
Research is highly diverse, both geographically and topically.
Ongoing faculty and student projects include studies in Antarctica, South America, Indonesia, Cyprus, Mexico, the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, and areas throughout the United States including Tennessee and surrounding states, California, and Nevada. Many faculty members collaborate on interdisciplinary projects combining field and laboratory components. Sedimentologic studies focus on the petrology of carbonates, sandstones, and black shales, and on the interpretation of depositional environments. Research in paleoecology encompasses trace and body-fossil assemblages and the significance of microfossils in modern and ancient depositional environments. Research in biostratigraphy, emphasizing the use of calcareous nannofossils in diverse Mesozoic-Cenozoic marine sequences, is also very active.