Computer Science - MS, MCS, PhD

About This Degree

This department offers graduate students an extensive education in many areas in computer science. Its faculty members are engaged in research and cutting-edge advancements in computer science and they teach the graduate courses in the department giving graduate students individual attention.

Students who graduate with advanced degrees in computer science have high job placement and, as computers are crucial to nearly every industry, continued growth in computer science careers is expected in the future. Additionally, the MS in computer science at USU is offered via distance education and available through evening classes allowing working professionals to obtain a master's degree.

There are six areas of research focus for graduate students and faculty within the department:

• Artificial Intelligence and Computer vision: Artificial intelligence deals with the development of systems (hardware and/or software) that in some way exhibit intelligent behavior. Computer vision studies how to make sense of and use images and video. Teaching and research at USU in this area focuses on robotics, image and video analysis, machine learning, and agents.
• Data Science: Data Science is an emerging field that seeks to visualize, analyze, and understand data, often big data. At USU researchers specialize in data quality, data visualization, data mining, and deep learning. USU offers an MS in Data Science as well.
• Security: Security is about all aspects of secure, private and reliable data, communications, and software. At USU teaching and research centers on making security and privacy more usable and cyber security.
• Algorithms: Algorithms are at the core of developing fast and efficient applications. USU researchers are at the cutting edge of algorithms in computational geometry, energy use, and bioinformatics.
• Software systems: This is a broad area of computer science that covers every aspect of software development, with the goal to create more sophisticated, reliable, and secure software. USU researchers specialize in distributed computing, software engineering, and databases.
• Computer education: Computer education covers ways to improve how we teach computer science and how to use computers in teaching. Researchers in this area at USU develop games, methodologies, and programs to improve education.

The Master of Computer Science (MCS) is a terminal degree with coursework requirements similar to the MS, but lacking the MS's requirement for original research.