School of Engineering
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

PhD

The department offers a program leading to the PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), as well as joint PhD's in Materials Science and Engineering and Human-Robot Interaction. Students in the program must already have a Master of Science (MS) degree, or equivalent, in ECE or a related field. Applicants to the PhD program who do not have an MS degree can be considered for admission to the MS/PhD program, wherein, they will automatically be promoted to the PhD program upon successful completion of their MS degree without the need to reapply. 

Advisor: Each PhD student should start under the guidance of an advisor approved by the ECE department. The student will do research under the direction of the advisor, complete the PhD 2-1-1-B+ requirements as stated in the ECE Graduate Handbook, write a dissertation about that work, have it read by a dissertation committee (see below), and defend the work in an oral presentation to the committee and all who are interested.

Annual PhD Progress Report: Each PhD candidate will be annually reviewed by the advisor, Research Committee, and the ECE department. This process requires the submission of the Annual Progress Report.

Coursework requirements: Requirements can be found in the ECE Graduate Handbook.

Research Committee: By the end of their third semester at Tufts, all graduate students planning on completing a PhD in the ECE department (whether they started with a BS, MS, or equivalent) and with consultation of their advisor must assemble a Research Committee (RC) that consists of three people:

  1. Advisor
  2. One additional ECE faculty member in the same, or a similar, area of study
  3. A third unrestricted member (faculty or equivalent), outside ECE but within Tufts

PhD Qualifier/Preliminary Proposal: Before the start of a student's fourth semester, students must have completed and defended their Preliminary Proposal to qualify as a PhD candidate and continue in the PhD program. Please see the ECE Graduate Handbook, p. 10 for details.

Dissertation Committee: The student will coordinate with their advisor to form a Dissertation Committee (DC) that will be proposed to the ECE Graduate Committee for approval. The dissertation committee is the same as the Research Committee with an additional 4th member: one person from outside of Tufts, with a PhD, who works in the relevant field.

PhD Proposal: The purpose of the proposal is to verify that the students have a comprehensive understanding of the background material needed to perform their research project.

Pre-Defense: A research committee meeting should take place 9-12 months before an intended defense date to evaluate their progress towards completing their dissertation. This evaluation will involve the student presenting their results in the form of a 30-40 minute presentation, including a research plan for the remaining time. At the conclusion, the committee will detail what the student must accomplish before defending their dissertation.

PhD dissertation: The student must publicly present and defend their research results before a full dissertation committee. As a general rule, PhD dissertations should be extended studies that go well beyond the scope of individual scholarly articles. They are expected to present a broad review of relevant literature and theory, to study extensively the problem posed and to place the results in a larger intellectual context.

Detailed descriptions of these processes can be found in the Graduate Student Handbook.