The Field of Computer Science is intended for students who are primarily interested in the general aspects of computational processes, both theoretical and practical. Areas of research in the field include algorithms, architecture, artificial intelligence, computer vision, computational biology, concurrency and distributed computing, database systems, machine learning, machine vision, natural language processing, networks, numerical analysis, programming environments, programming languages and methodology, robotics, and theory of computation. The Cornell Ph.D. program in computer science is consistently ranked among the top six departments in the country, with world-class research covering all of computer science. Our computer science program is distinguished by the excellence of the faculty, by a long tradition of pioneering research, and by the breadth of its Ph.D. program. Faculty and Ph.D. students are located both in Ithaca and in New York City at the Cornell Tech campus. The Field of Computer Science also includes faculty members from other departments (Electrical Engineering, Information Science, Applied Math, Mathematics, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Computational Biology, and Architecture) who can supervise a student's Ph.D. thesis research in computer science.
The nation's security and economy rely on infrastructures for communication, finance, energy distribution and transportation - all increasingly dependent on networked information systems. When these networked information systems perform badly or do not work at all, they put life, liberty and property at risk. National Research Council, Trust in Cyberspace (F.B. Schneider, editor)Cornell has one of the largest and most visible groups of security researchers found anywhere, tackling the fundamental problems of security and privacy in modern computing systems. Cornell has been a leader in computer security for decades, making widely recognized contributions that range from theoretical foundations to practical implementations to influence on government policy.
