Introduction to the PhD Program of the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University

1
Introduction to the PhD Programof the Department
of Computer Science and Technologyat Tsinghua
University

• Prof. Chuang Lin

2
Outline

• Brief introduction
• Present situation
• Student enrollment
• Basic requirements
• Principal problems
• Initiatives to improve the quality
• Future perspectives

3
Brief introduction (1)

• Founded in 1958
• At that time, its name was Automatic Control
  depart.
• 41 Professors, 35 Associate Professors
• 3 fellows of the Chinese Academy of Science/
  Engineering
• Chair professors
• Andrew Yao
• Thomas S. Huang
• http//www.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn

4
Brief introduction (2)

• 36 PhD Supervisors who must fulfill the following
  conditions
• Full professors
• Currently have ongoing projects
• Have published academic papers in last two years
• Its different than US universities

5
Present situation (1)

• Ranked first in the national academic estimation
  of computer science in 1996, and was one of the
  first 3 departments to obtain the authorization
  for PhD degree in computer science
• Ranked first in three indices (academic faculty,
  student cultivation, and academic reputation)
  among the total of four in the national academic
  evaluation of computer science in 2002

6
Present situation (2)

• Since 1978
• 307 students have obtained the PhD degree
• Four national excellent doctoral thesis awards
• Zhigang zhu (Advisor Chunyi Shi, Guangyou Xu)
• Fuchun Sun (Advisor Bo Zhang, Zengqi Sun)
• Junhai Yong (Advisor Jiaguang Sun, Shimin Hu)
• Yuan Feng (Advisor Mingsheng Ying)

7
Present situation (3)

• Doctoral students at present
• 395 students
• Enrolled PhD students in recent years
• 51 students, 2003
• 64 students, 2004
• 56 students, 2005
• 49 students, 2006 (planned)

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Present situation (4)

• Graduated PhD students in recent years
• 42 students, 2003
• 43 students, 2004
• 44 students, 2005

9
Present situation (5)

• More and more excellent doctoral students
• Yuan Feng
• Published high quality papers
• IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
• Physical Review
• Yuchun Ma
• Published high quality papers
• IEEE Transactions on CAD of Integrated Circuits
  and Systems
• ACM Transactions on Design Automation of
  Electronic Systems

10
Student enrollment (1)

• Excellent students who earned their bachelors
  degree in our department may enroll without
  entrance exam
• 21 students in 2003
• 25 students in 2004
• 23 students in 2005

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Student enrollment (2)

• Excellent students who earned their bachelors
  degree at other key universities may enroll
  without entrance exam
• They must be ranked in the top 3 in their
  university
• 19 students in 2003
• 22 students in 2004
• 17 students in 2005

12
Student enrollment (3)

• Students with a masters degree enrolled with
  entrance exam
• 11 students in 2003
• 17 students in 2004
• 16 students in 2005
• The face-to-face interview is the most important
  item in the doctoral entrance exam

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Basic requirements (1)

• Terms of Study
• 3 to 5 years for doctoral students who hold a
  masters degree
• 4 to 6 years for doctoral students who hold a
  bachelors degree

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Basic requirements (2)

• Courses
• At least 34 credits for doctoral students who
  hold a bachelors degree
• Typically 9 to 11 courses
• At least 18 credits for doctoral students who
  hold a masters degree
• Typically 3 to 4 courses

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Basic requirements (3)

• Courses
• Including both basic theory courses and advanced
  research courses
• Basic theory
• 10 courses on mathematics and other basic theory
• Students can take some courses in the mathematics
  department
• Advanced research courses
• Over 50 advanced research courses cover most
  research areas in our department

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Basic requirements (4)

• Graduation requirements of the State
• Come from National Academic Degree statute
• Solid and wide basic theory, and systematic and
  deep major knowledge
• The ability to independently conduct scientific
  research
• Obtain creative fruits in science or special
  technology research

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Basic requirements (5)

• Graduation requirements of the university
• To publish at least 4 papers and meet the
  following requirements
• At least one paper published in an international
  journal indexed by SCI, or
• At least two papers published in international
  conferences indexed by SCI, or
• At least two papers published in international
  conferences or journals indexed by EI, and at
  least one journal paper between them

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Basic requirements (6)

• Graduation requirements of our department
• There is no minimum number of papers required if
  the following requirements are satisfied
• Publishing one paper in international journals
  that are indexed in ISI Web of Science and the
  impact factor is more than 1.0, or
• Publishing several papers in international
  journals that are indexed in ISI Web of Science
  and the total impact factor is more than 1.5
• Goal to encourage the publishing of high quality
  papers

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Principal problems (1)

• The overall quality needs to be improved
• Obvious gaps compared to the top-class
  universities in the world
• The academic time for doctoral students is
  relatively insufficient
• Universities are demanded to play an important
  role in national construction since China is a
  developing country
• A lot of time is spent in the engineering projects

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Principal problems (2)

• There are not so many high-quality papers
• Limited by the English level
• Not enough international communication
• The ability of professors also needs to be
  improved
• Obvious gaps compared to the top-class
  universities

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Initiatives to improve the quality (1)

• Setting up a more reasonable educational system
• Providing more chances for international
  intercommunion
• Encouraging the publishing of high-quality
  academic papers

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Initiatives to improve the quality (2)

• Setting up a more reasonable educational system
• Qualified examination of doctoral students
• Department is the organizer
• Including both the course grade and the
  face-to-face interview grade
• The bottom 20 of students will fail, and have to
  take another exam
• Anonymous review of doctoral thesis
• Annual academic report
• Doctoral students should submit their annual
  academic reports every year
• Department will review these reports and will
  give some feedback to both student and advisor

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Initiatives to improve the quality (3)

• Providing more chances for international
  intercommunion, going out
• Encouraging doctoral students to do collaborative
  research with top-class international
  universities
• Supporting doctoral students for vacation
  internships in prestigious academic institutes
• Funding doctoral students to participate in
  high-level international conferences

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Initiatives to improve the quality (4)

• Providing more chances for international
  intercommunion, coming in
• Chair professors
• Andrew Yao
• Thomas S. Huang
• Short-term courses by professors from overseas
  universities

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Initiatives to improve the quality (5)

• Encourage publishing of high-quality academic
  papers
• No paper number requirement if students have one
  high-quality paper published in high-level
  international journals
• IEEE Transactions
• ACM Transactions

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Initiatives to improve the quality (6)

• Some considerations
• Cultivating top students vs. covering all
  students
• Improving construction of educational mechanisms
  and assuring the cultivating quality
• Introducing psychological estimation in the
  entrance examination
• Exit mechanism for doctoral students

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Future Prospective

• After 5-10 years of effort, the quality of
  education for doctoral students is expected to
  catch up with or get closer to the top 30
  computer departments in US

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• Thank you!