Department of Computer and Information Sciences

The Computer Science Master’s program gives graduates a broad and deep knowledge of computer science by offering a strong core program with a wide selection of elective courses. The program maintains a balance between theory, systems, and applications, with emphasis on software development.

Our students gain the ability and courage to use their knowledge by working on realistic scale projects in the graduate courses. Their experience includes work as a member of a team as well as situations where an individual is responsible for the whole project from problem specification to the completion of the solution. Students learn to conduct independent research and present their results in oral and written forms. They graduate with the knowledge and skills required to develop and design high quality computer systems and application software. They have the ability to follow the rapid changes in the field of Computer Science. As highly qualified professionals, our students are ready to compete for responsible positions in the computer industry, research institutions, government, or to pursue their education in PhD programs.

The Computer and Information Science Department maintains laboratories for upper-division undergraduate courses and graduate activities, consisting of SUNStations with multiprocessor server, and Power PC, and Windows NT workstations, each grouped in a local area network and also cross-networked, with software allowing multiprocessor functions for parallel and distributed computing and networking computing; and a laboratory with computers dedicated to WWW operations and development. There are also individual machines of various kinds, including a transputer-based parallel system.

The backbone of institutional computing at UMass Dartmouth is the ALPHA system, two Alpha 2100s (model 4/275) for administrative and research data processing and an Alpha 2000 (model 4/200) for library research and instructional use. The ALPHA system has approximately 120 general access terminals connected to a Metapath communications network across campus. The ALPHA has a variety of software available including electronic mail, bulletin boards, programming languages such as BASIC, FORTRAN, Pascal, C, Cobol, and various statistical packages. The ALPHA computers provide 64 gigabytes of disk storage and operate on an FDDI network. Various processing and data functions are also resident on the VAX 8650, which was until 1995 the university’s mainframe computer.

Admission Requirements

Applicants must submit the required application materials to the Graduate Office. In addition, they must submit GRE general scores. The personal statement should explain the candidate’s goals and objectives concerning his/her professional career.

Applicants should have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution (Applicants who do not meet this criterion may also be considered for admission if they can demonstrate convincingly that they have the equivalent of a baccalaureate degree.) In addition, they should demonstrate:

Knowledge of program design in a high-level programming language (such as C, C++, Java)
Knowledge of an assembly language, computer architecture, and operating systems
Knowledge of software engineering
Knowledge of mathematical analysis and elements of theoretical foundations of computer science and analysis of algorithms

The department has established a fast-track BS-MS program permitting UMass Dartmouth Computer Science undergraduates to progress to the masters level smoothly and at a savings of some overall credits. See the General Catalogue for information and special admissions procedures.

Financial Assistance

A number of assistantships are available on a competitive basis. Other assistance, such as loans or work study, may be available to you. Please consult the chapter on “Expenses and Financial Assistance.”

Graduate Post-Baccalaureate Certificates

A certificate offers the working professional recognition of a coherent program of advanced study at the graduate level. Each of our certificate programs is compatible with our MS degree requirements, enabling certificate recipients to transition to a degree program without loss of credits.

Acceptance to a Certificate Program

Applicants must have an earned MS in an appropriate field. One applies for acceptance to a graduate certificate program through the Graduate Studies Office. Applicants follow the procedures for graduate degree acceptance into the MS in Computer Science, but in a curtailed form. Thus, they submit a shortened application form and supply an essay and official transcripts of all post-secondary work, as instructed herein. However, they are not required to submit GRE scores or recommendation letters.

A joint faculty committee will review applications for acceptance to this certificate program. One element in the review will be to assess whether a student has met the stated prerequisites and in general has the appropriate combination of background and experience to succeed in the program. It is possible for acceptance to be offered with a contingency that the student must also take one or more undergraduate prerequisite courses.

Other Certificate Policies

Prospective students can take up to two courses (with permission of the instructor) for the certificate before completing their official acceptance to the certificate program. Certificate students may use no more than one CIS Technical Elective 400-level course toward their certificate program, and a 400-level course may be used only when the related graduate course is not offered during the student’s certificate program enrollment. Other graduate policies, such as those for longevity of credit, acceptable grades, and repeatability of courses, apply to certificate students as to degree students.

See Computer Science, Computer Networks and Distributed Systems, or Software Development and Software Engineering for description and requirements.

BS/MS Undergraduate/Graduate Integrated Program Option in Computer Science

The department offers an integrated program that allows qualified UMass Dartmouth undergraduate majors in Computer Science to proceed directly to the master’s degree program and complete both degrees with a reduction in overall credits required. See the current General Catalogue for information on this option.

Faculty and Fields of Interest

Balasubramanian, Ramprasad Professor of Computer and Information Science (2000), BSc 1989 University of Madras, India, MS 1991 University of Toledo, MSOperRes 1993 University of Kentucky, PhD 1999 University of South Florida. Specializations: Robotics, Computer vision, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence.

Bergandy, Jan (Chairperson) Professor of Computer and Information Science (1983), MS 1976 Technical University of Poznan, MS 1976 Adam Mickiewicz University, PhD 1980 Technical University of Poznan. Specializations: Object technology, distributed systems, software engineering.

Bergstein, Paul L Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science (1998), BS 1978 SUNY College of Environmental Science and Syracuse University, MS 1981 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD 1994 Northeastern University. Specializations: Object-oriented progamming, databases.

Khatib, Firas Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Science (2013), BA 2001 University of California, Berkeley, PhD University of California, Santa Cruz. Specializations: Bioinformatics/Computational Biology, Protein Structure Prediction, Citizen Science.

Valova, Iren T Professor of Computer Information Science (2000), MSc 1991 Technical University, Sofia, Bulgaria, PhD 1997 Tokyo Institute of Technology. Specializations: Artificial intelligence, neural networks, pattern recognition.

Xu, Haiping Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science (2005), BS 1996, MS 1999 Nanjing University, PhD 2005 Washington State University. Specializations: Software engineering, distributed computing, multi-agent systems, formal methods.

Zhang, Xiaoqin (Graduate Program Director) Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science (2002), BS 1995 University of Science and Technology of China, MS 1998 University of Massachusetts Amherst. Specializations: Multi-agent systems, intelligent agents, e-commerce.

Contact

Dr. Xiaopin “Shelley” Zhang
Graduate Program Director, Computer Science
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
285 Old Westport Road
North Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300
508-999-8293
shelley.zhang@umassd.edu