Dr. Radhika Iyengar
Professor of Computer Science
Assigns first-year advisors and approves program changes (Graduate Handbook §4.1, §2.9).
School of Engineering & Computing · Master's degree
Master of Science in Computer Science
The MS in Computer Science deepens preparation in algorithms, systems, and artificial intelligence. Students take breadth courses in theory, systems, and applications, then specialize through a research thesis with a faculty mentor or a project pathway that ends in a capstone software portfolio.
MS · 33 credits
Program Overview & Curriculum
The MS in Computer Science deepens preparation in algorithms, systems, and artificial intelligence. Students take breadth courses in theory, systems, and applications, then specialize through a research thesis with a faculty mentor or a project pathway that ends in a capstone software portfolio.
Program requirements, the Graduate Program Director, and tuition for this degree are set out in Graduate Handbook §12.7: Master of Science in Computer Science (MS).
| Requirement | Credits |
|---|---|
| Breadth courses: one each in theory, systems, artificial intelligence, and software engineering | 12 |
| Electives | 15 |
| Thesis research (thesis pathway), or capstone project work (project pathway) | 6 |
| Total | 33 |
Culminating experience
Master's thesis, or a capstone software project portfolio in the final semester.
At a glance
- Degree
- MS
- Credits
- 33
- Pathway
- Thesis or non-thesis
- Format
- Full-time in two years, or part-time
- Delivery
- Daytime classes
- Time limit
- 5 years from matriculation
Program: Graduate Handbook §12.7 · Time limits: Graduate Handbook §3.5
Graduate Program Director
Department
33 credits
Courses
The courses that count toward each part of the MS curriculum, with the terms each is usually offered.
Breadth courses: one each in theory, systems, artificial intelligence, and software engineering
12 creditsCS 510 Theory of Computation 3 credits Fall
Covers computability, decidability, and complexity classes including P, NP, and NP-completeness. Students write formal proofs and reductions in weekly problem sets.
CS 520 Advanced Computer Systems 3 credits Fall
Studies operating system design, concurrency, storage, and distributed systems through research papers. Students measure the performance of a small system they build in a term project.
CS 530 Advanced Artificial Intelligence 3 credits Spring
Covers search, probabilistic reasoning, planning, and knowledge representation. Students implement and compare several agent architectures.
CS 540 Advanced Software Engineering 3 credits Spring
Covers software architecture, testing strategy, and the maintenance of large codebases. Teams design, build, and review a multi-module application.
Electives
15 creditsCS 550 Advanced Algorithms 3 credits Fall
Covers randomized, approximation, and online algorithms and amortized analysis. Students prove correctness and running time for each algorithm studied.
CS 560 Machine Learning 3 credits Fall, Spring
Covers supervised and unsupervised learning, model selection, regularization, and evaluation. Students train and tune models in Python on real datasets.
CS 565 Database System Implementation 3 credits Fall
Examines how relational databases store data, plan queries, and run transactions. Students build a query optimizer component in a course project.
CS 570 Natural Language Processing 3 credits Spring
Covers tokenization, language models, parsing, and text classification. Students build a working text-analysis system from raw corpora.
CS 575 Computer Security 3 credits Fall
Covers applied cryptography, authentication, and common software vulnerabilities. Students analyze attacks and design defenses for a sample system.
CS 580 Deep Learning 3 credits Spring
Covers neural network architectures, optimization, and training at scale. A weekly computing lab has students train convolutional and sequence models on GPU nodes.
CS 585 Computer Vision 3 credits Fall
Covers image formation, feature detection, object recognition, and video analysis. Assignments apply both classical methods and learned models to image data.
CS 590 Programming Languages and Compilers 3 credits Spring
Covers type systems, program semantics, and compiler back ends. Students write a compiler for a small typed language.
Thesis research (thesis pathway), or capstone project work (project pathway)
6 creditsCS 599 Master's Thesis Research 6 credits Fall, Spring, Summer
Independent research and thesis writing under the direction of a faculty mentor. Meetings are by arrangement, and the thesis is defended before the supervisory committee.
CS 598 Capstone Software Project 6 credits Fall, Spring, Summer
Students design, build, and document a substantial software project under a faculty supervisor. The course ends with a public presentation and a portfolio review.
Sample Roadmap
Sample Plan
A representative term-by-term sequence for the MS. “Elective” is one 3-credit course chosen from the program's elective list above, with your advisor.
Fall 1
- CS 510 Theory of Computation 3 cr
- CS 520 Advanced Computer Systems 3 cr
- Elective 3 cr
Term total 9 credits
Spring 1
- CS 530 Advanced Artificial Intelligence 3 cr
- CS 540 Advanced Software Engineering 3 cr
- Elective 3 cr
Term total 9 credits
Fall 2
- Elective 3 cr
- Elective 3 cr
- Elective 3 cr
Term total 9 credits
Spring 2
- CS 599 Master's Thesis Research 6 cr
Term total 6 credits
Graduate Handbook
Milestones & Academic Standards
Every master's program at Alkimi follows the same Graduate School milestones. Each links to the handbook section that governs it.
- 1
Thesis and non-thesis pathways
Graduate Handbook §5.1: Master s Degree Milestones: Thesis vs. Non-Thesis Options
- 2
Supervisory committee
Graduate Handbook §4.2: Master s Supervisory Committee Composition
- 3
Format review and ProQuest submission
Graduate Handbook §5.6: Thesis and Dissertation Format Review and ProQuest Submission
- 4
Intent to Graduate and degree audit
Graduate Handbook §11.1: Filing the Intent to Graduate and Degree Audits
The 3.0 rule
Graduate students must keep a cumulative GPA of 3.000 or higher to stay in good standing and to graduate (Graduate Handbook §3.1).
Advisor
Thesis students choose a major professor before completing 12 credits. Non-thesis students are advised by the Graduate Program Director or a capstone coordinator (Graduate Handbook §4.1).
2026–27
Tuition & Funding
Graduate tuition
$1,450
Per credit hour, plus $300 in mandatory fees per semester. 33 credits come to $47,850 in tuition at 2026–27 rates.
Assistantship stipend
$21,000
9-month stipend for a master's teaching, research, or graduate assistant.
Rates: Graduate Handbook §6.2
Assistantships in this program
Full-time students are considered for teaching assistantships in the introductory programming courses and for research assistantships on faculty grants.
A 20-hour assistantship includes a full tuition waiver of up to 12 credits per semester and covers mandatory fees (Graduate Handbook §6.3).
People
Faculty & Contacts
Department of Computer Science
45 faculty →Chair: Dr. Olumide Olatunji
Computer Science teaches programming, algorithms, systems, and artificial intelligence, and houses the Data Science program with faculty from Statistics and Mathematics and the interdisciplinary AI & Society minor.
The Graduate School
- Where
- Founders Hall 240
- Phone
- (555) 555-0138
- gradschool
@university.alkimi.ai - Hours
- Monday–Friday 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
- Lead
- Dr. Victor Huang, Dean of the Graduate School