College of Arts and Sciences

Departmental URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~scicomp/

Departmental E-mail: scicomp [at] denali [dot] physics [dot] indiana [dot] edu

(Please note that when conferring University Graduate School degrees, minors, certificates, and sub-plans, The University Graduate School’s staff use those requirements contained only in The University Graduate School Bulletin.)

Curriculum

Curriculum
Courses
Faculty

Ph.D. Minor in Scientific Computing

Scientific computing is an interdisciplinary, interdepartmental graduate minor recognizing important changes that have intro­duced a powerful and essential mode of scientific research. The increasing availability of high-performance computers has led to a method of scientific inquiry based on mathematical mod­els solved by means of numerical computations, analyzed and viewed by means of advanced computer graphics. Carrying out research by these means is necessarily multidisciplinary, calling on advanced skills in areas that span many classical divisions of academia. The Ph.D. minor in scientific computing provides the interdepartmental education necessary to equip students for research within this paradigm. Scientific computing courses are generally organized into four categories: numerical analysis, scientific applications, scientific visualization, and high-perfor­mance computing. Students are encouraged to develop expertise in more than one of those areas.

Course Requirements

Twelve (12) credit hours in approved courses, 6 credit hours of which must be outside the student’s major department. However, at the discretion of the minor advisors, students whose major curriculum includes one or more courses with a substantial scientific computing component may reduce the required credit hours for the minor by as much as six (6) credit hours; at minimum, six (6) credit hours in approved courses outside the student's major department are still required.

The course P573 Introduction to Scientific Computing I has been created as an introductory course for students in the program. Students entering with a background in computational sci­ence or engineering, in consultation with their advisor on the Scientific Computing Committee, may omit this course from their curriculum. Students develop their course of study with two faculty: one from the student’s home department (presumably the thesis advisor) and the other a member of the Graduate Committee on Scientific Computing from outside the student’s home department. The proposed course of study will be submitted for approval by the home department or thesis advisor to the director of the scientific computing program. If approved, a letter detailing the course of study will be signed by the direc­tor with copy sent electronically to the student’s home department. Significant changes to the course of study need to undergo the same process of development and approval. Certi­fication of completion of the minor requirements will be by the director or the appointed scientific computing minor representative.