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Qualifying Exams

Information about Quals:

Artificial Intelligence

1. The candidate student must form a committee of 3 AI faculty members.

2. The student is asked to prepare a 30-minute presentation on a research project the student is working on.

3. The student supplies to each commitee member a short report summarizing the student’s research project and a list of references that is related to such a project. Report and list of references are due to the committee members 3 days before the exam.

4. The exam is one hour long and it is divided in two parts:

4.a) During the first half hour the student presents the research project.

4.b) The second half hour comprises a 30min of QA session related to the research project by the committee. During such session committee members can (but are not necessarily committed to) ask questions related to any of the papers in the list of references. This gives the opportunity to committee members to assess general mastery of the area the student is working on.

Physiqual

The Physiqual will now consist of exams with faculty in 5 areas: vision, geometry, math, graphics and robotics.

The second part of the Physiqual which consists of a talk on a few selected papers will no longer be part of the Physiqual, given that we now have a Thesis Proposal.

For students who have ALREADY taken the second oral portion of the Physiqual, I would suggest their advisors grandfather them through the Thesis Proposal requirement.

The current language of the Thesis Proposal requirement would seem to allow this.

Theory Qualifying Exam Overview

Form a panel of three professors, select 3-4 papers in an area related (but usually not identical) to your thesis work for you to read, review and synthesize over a period of a month (30 days). Write a report on your review/synthesis, give it to the committee, and also make an oral presentation to the committee, followed by questions.