Grad Profiles - Colubia University Engineering

Overview
Originally designated King's College, Columbia opened its doors in 1754 under a grant issued by King George II. Over the years, professional and graduate schools were added. In 1896, it was redesignated Columbia University. The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science is the outgrowth of one of these professional schools, the School of Mines, established in 1864 as the first school of its kind in the United States.

The century-long tradition in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science has been the philosophy of combining a rich liberal education with the rigor of technical education. Many of the revolutionary advances of contemporary technology have been pioneered at Columbia.

Attending the schools and colleges that constitute Columbia are 23,650 students, about 14,690 of whom are graduate students. The 1,200 graduate students attending the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science represent almost 200 colleges and universities, about 50 of which are outside the United States.

The Location and Community
Columbia's Morningside Heights campus is located about 15 minutes from the heart of New York City. The student is offered a range of educational, cultural, and recreational opportunities.

Programs of Study and Degree Requirements
The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science offers programs of study leading to the Master of Science degree, professional engineering degrees, and two doctoral degrees, the Ph.D. and the Eng.Sc.D., in the Departments of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Computer Science, Earth and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Materials Science, and Mechanical Engineering. The faculty in the School consists of 137 full-time members.

These departments also provide the structure for graduate study leading to the master's and doctoral degrees in such interdisciplinary fields as applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, earth resources engineering, financial engineering, materials science, medical physics, plasma research, quantum electronics, solid-state science and engineering, and telecommunications engineering. A joint M.B.A./M.S. program is offered in cooperation with the Graduate School of Business in the fields of industrial engineering, mineral economics, and operations research.

The M.S. degree is awarded upon satisfactory completion of a minimum of 30 points of approved graduate study beyond the bachelor's degree. Programs leading to professional engineering degrees in engineering mechanics, computer science, and chemical, civil, electrical, industrial, mechanical, metallurgical, mineral, and mining engineering are available for engineers who want advanced work beyond the level of the M.S. degree but do not wish to emphasize research. The professional engineering degree requires a minimum of 30 points of graduate work beyond the M.S. degree. Part-time programs leading to the master's and professional engineering degrees can be arranged in most departments. The minimum requirements for either the Ph.D. or the Eng.Sc.D. are the completion of 60 points of approved graduate work beyond the B.S., the passing of appropriate qualifying examinations as prescribed by a department or interdisciplinary committee, and the completion and oral defense of a dissertation based on original research.

Facilities & Resources
The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science is housed in the Seeley W. Mudd Building, a fifteen-story classroom and laboratory building; the Engineering Terrace Building; and the Computer Science Building. In addition, the Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research houses research programs in computers, microelectronics, telecommunications, and condensed-matter physics as well as a 200-seat auditorium, seminar rooms, offices, and laboratories. Other research facilities with modern equipment are available in all departments. Among the facilities are laboratories for research in acoustics, artificial organs, advanced computer architecture, heat transfer, materials, microelectronics, lasers, telecommunications, nuclear measurements and technology, plasma physics, fusion energy, and environmental transport contaminants. The Monell Engineering Library contains approximately 200,000 volumes and more than 1 million technical reports. Through its continuously expanding array of centralized computing resources, Columbia University provides the following services to students and faculty members: high-speed network access to the Internet (1 Gbps uplink for the School of Engineering); dial-up and direct Ethernet connections for network access both on and off campus; electronic mail service and personal Web pages; access to ColumbiaNet, Columbia's online information system, which provides hundreds of online services and resources to students and faculty members; multimedia classrooms; and research and development in computing systems and information delivery. Students should visit the Web site at http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ for more information on Columbia's computing services. Each department in the Engineering School has dedicated computer labs for students as well as access to University-wide computer labs.

Financial Aid:
Funds are available based on academic merit, financial need, and departmental requirements for research and teaching assistantships. Many students hold staff appointments, which form an integral part of students' training and allow rapid progress toward the degree. Loans and Federal Work-Study positions are available to needy students who are U.S. citizens, permanent resident aliens, or political refugees.

Housing/Living Expenses:
University residence halls include traditional dormitory facilities as well as suites and apartments for single and married students. On-campus living expenses for 2004-05 were approximately $14,190 (including board). Limited graduate housing is available and is by application only. The cost averages between $575 and $1275 per month, depending on the type of accommodations desired. Other off-campus rooms and apartments are also available.

How to Apply / Application
The basic requirement for admission as a graduate student is a bachelor's degree in any field of engineering or a related field with a record that indicates the preparation and ability necessary for successful performance at Columbia. For the fall term, Ph.D., Eng.Sc.D., and financial aid applicants must apply by December 15. February 15 is the deadline for all other applicants. Applications that are received late are reviewed until August 1 if space is available. Those for the spring term should be submitted by October 1. Applicants may also apply online at the School's Web site and are strongly encouraged to do so, as it is the preferred way of applying.

Who to Contact
Office of Graduate Student Services
The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
524 Seeley W. Mudd Building
Columbia University
New York, New York 10027

212-854-6438

E-mail: seasgradmit@columbia.edu

http://www.engineering.columbia.edu/

Research Areas
Applied Mathematics. The study of advanced mathematical and computational methods with applications to the physical, biological, and engineering sciences forms the core of these activities. Areas of research, which are often of an interdisciplinary nature, include nonlinear dynamics and chaos; scientific computing; atmospheric, ocean, climate, and solid-earth dynamics; and biomathematics.

Applied Physics. Faculty research interests fall into the following four general categories: plasma physics, solid-state physics, optical physics, and applied mathematics. Current research projects in plasma physics include equilibrium and stability studies of the high-beta magnetized plasmas, feedback control of plasma instabilities, theory of stellarators, innovative fusion confinement systems, coherent radiation from intense relativistic electron beams, free-electron lasers, space plasma physics, trapped-particle instability studies, computer simulation of plasmas, and fusion-energy engineering studies. In solid-state physics, projects include electronic transport in low-dimension semiconductor systems, the fractional quantum Hall effect, surface photophysics, properties of semiconductors at high pressure and temperature, semiconductor devices, and laser device processing. In optical physics, research includes nonlinear optics, laser physics, and optical scattering.

Biomedical Engineering. Study includes both core biomedical engineering courses from one of three academic tracks, listed here with associated areas of faculty research: (1) biomechanics: atomic force microscopy, biorheology, bone mechanics, cardiac mechanics, cellular mechanics, computer-aided surgery, finite element modeling, growth and remodeling, mechanotransduction, and membrane mechanics; (2) biomedical imaging: biophotonics, functional imaging, medical image analysis, MRI, MR spectroscopy, machine learning, multiscale representations, neural signal processing, optical imaging, PET, and 3-D ultrasound; and (3) cellular and tissue engineering: artificial organs, biomaterials, bioreactors, cardiovascular prostheses, engineered cartilage, engineered muscle, galvanotaxis, genomic engineering, interface design, and mechanotransduction.

Chemical Engineering. Faculty research interests fall generally into four broad areas: bioengineering, including cellular and biomaterials engineering; polymeric and other soft materials, especially focused on interfaces and thin films; applications and fundamentals of genomic engineering, including DNA sequencing and microarray sensors; and electrochemistry, especially related to microelectronics, interfacial engineering, and sensor fabrication. Research projects are often interdisciplinary in nature and emphasize the application of the thermodynamic, kinetic, and transport principles, either to design new products and processes related to these four research areas, or to advance the base of fundamental knowledge in each area of research.

Civil Engineering, Engineering Mechanics. The main faculty research focus is in structural mechanics, with applications to infrastructure deterioration, damage detection and monitoring, earthquake engineering, soil-structure interaction, and active control of structural motion; mechanics of materials and continua, with applications to continuum damage mechanics, development of new construction materials such as concrete that uses waste glass, and to related areas in biomechanics; and fluid mechanics and geoenvironmental engineering, with applications in hydrogeology, contaminant transport, geosynthetics, and site remediation. Research in these areas is both experimental and analytical. There is extensive interaction with various New York City agencies on infrastructure-related problems.

Computer Science. Research areas include artificial intelligence, natural-language processing, multimedia, user interfaces, digital libraries, computer graphics, augmented reality, virtual environments, wearable computing, distributed data mining, bioinformatics, machine learning, databases, Internet information services, computer vision, video understanding, vision sensors, robotics, logic programming, topological graph theory, information-based complexity, analysis of algorithms, computational complexity, cryptography, Internet real-time multimedia systems and protocols, computer networks, network security, organization of distributed systems, parallel and distributed operating systems, network and multiprocessor performance evaluation, software development environments, collaborative work, programming languages, functional programming, asynchronous circuits, computer-aided digital design, logic circuits theory, digital systems, multimedia expansion, language generation, and user modeling.

Earth and Environmental Engineering. Research areas include environmentally sustainable use of primary materials (minerals, fuels, water), recycling of used materials, management of residues, processes that govern the availability/quality of water resources, vulnerability to industrial activities, mitigation/remediation of environmental impacts of human activity, and energy recovery from waste materials, new energy sources, and carbon sequestration strategies. Many of the faculty members are associated with the Earth Engineering Center (EEC), the engineering unit of the Columbia Earth Institute (comprising the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Biosphere 2, the International Research Institute for Climate Prediction, and other centers and programs). Other faculty members are affiliated with the NSF Industry/University Center for Surfactants, which develops and characterizes novel surfactants for industrial applications such as coatings, dispersions, personal care products, soil decontamination, and waste management.

Electrical Engineering. Students within the electrical engineering department can choose from a number of research specialties, including digital image processing, networking/communications, digital and analog circuit design, computer engineering, optoelectronics, semiconductor devices, electromagnetics, and plasma physics. Research projects are grouped into four focus areas: communications and networking, image and signal processing, microelectronic circuits, and microelectronic devices, electromagnetics, optoelectronics, and plasma physics.

Industrial Engineering. Faculty research interests are in the design, analysis, and control of production and service systems. Current studies involve flexible manufacturing systems, scheduling, statistical quality control, supply chain management, production planning, inventory control, productivity, semiconductor manufacturing, and yield management.

Materials Science and Engineering. Research areas include microscopic study of interfaces, grain boundaries, and thin films; lattice defects and electrical properties of ceramics; laser processing of thin films; nanostructured materials; optical and electrical properties of wide-band gap semiconductors; and plasma chemical etching. Many of the faculty members are associated with NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), an interdisciplinary team of University, industrial, and national lab scientists and engineers developing new types of composite organic/inorganic materials and structured thin films.

Mechanical Engineering. Graduate study programs include fluid dynamics, mechanics of solids, kinematics, dynamics of machines, robotics, heat transfer, biomechanics, control theory, and manufacturing engineering. Major research is in chaotic mixing, effect of microstructures on turbulent flow, mass transfer in through-mask electrodeposition, submicron optical flow, microsystems engineering, laser micromachining, laser forming, cryogenic machining, repetitive control methods to improve electron beam focus, orthopedic biomechanics, mechanoelectrochemical behaviors of soft tissues, biotribology, and computer-aided surgery.