Information Science PhD

Major: Information Science
Degree Awarded: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Calendar Type: Quarter
Minimum Required Credits: 45.0
Co-op Option: None
Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code: 11.0401
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code: 11-3021

About the Program

The College of Computing & Informatics' on-campus PhD in Information Science program prepares students to become creative, interdisciplinary researchers with foundations in information science, data science, and human-centered computing.

Purpose and Scope

The program is designed to support all students in attaining a high level of scholarly achievement in seminars as well as supervised and independent study. The doctoral program has two major goals: acquisition of in-depth knowledge in a specialized research area, and interdisciplinary breadth to support creative scholarship. The degree prepares students for leadership and research careers in academia, industry, administration, and policy setting.

Opportunities

Most graduates move into academic or research and development (R&D) careers.

Additional Information

A master’s degree is not a prerequisite for the PhD. For more information about this program, please visit the College of Computing & Informatics PhD in Information Science webpage. 

Degree Requirements

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) candidates must complete a minimum of 90 degree credits. Students entering with a master's degree can use the master’s degree as 45.0 credits towards the total of 90.0 credits, pending faculty advisor approval. Students entering without a master's degree need to complete a combination of course and research credits with faculty advisor approval, towards the total of 90.0 credits.

Post-Bachelor's Student Requirements

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Students may take courses beyond the list of the specialization courses, including courses from other academic units, with approval from the PhD program director.

Post-Master's Student Requirements

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Students may take courses beyond the list of the specialization courses, including courses from other academic units, with approval from the PhD program director.

Sample Plan of Study

Full-Time with completed Master's Degree (Post-Master's Students)

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Number of credits taken each quarter is variable depending on stage of the project and other credit load. May be taken for additional credits if necessary.

Full-Time without completed Master's Degree (Post-Bachelor's Students)

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Number of credits taken each quarter is variable depending on stage of the project and other credit load. May be taken for additional credits if necessary.

Facilities

3675 Market Street

The School of Computer and Information Sciences (SCIS) is located at 3675 Market. Occupying three floors in the modern uCity Square building, SCIS's home offers state-of-the-art technology in our classrooms, research labs, offices, meeting areas, and collaboration spaces. 3675 Market offers Class A laboratory, office, coworking, and convening spaces. Located at the intersection of 37th and Market Streets, 3675 Market acts as a physical nexus for our school, bridging academic campuses and medical centers to the east and south, the commercial corridors along Market Street and nearby Chestnut Street, and the residential communities to the north and west.

The uCity Square building offers:

• Speculative lab/office space
• World-class facilities operated by CIC
• Café/restaurant on-site
• Quorum, a two-story, 15K SF convening space and conference center
• Adjacency to future public square
• Access to Science Center’s nationally renowned business acceleration and technology commercialization programs

Drexel University Libraries

The Drexel University Libraries is a one-stop resource for all members of the Drexel community, providing access to millions of print and online books, journals, databases and other media, as well as hundreds of online course and research guides, workshops, and tutorials. Expert librarians offer a variety of consultation services virtually or in person, including help with course-related projects, strategies for finding and evaluating authoritative information, and approaches to utilizing, organizing, and presenting scholarship.

Students in SCIS also have access to the W. W. Hagerty Library where they can take advantage of the Libraries’ various learning environments, including group study rooms, collaborative and silent study areas, and 24/7 study space in the Dragons’ Learning Den. The Libraries also offers a wellness room, printing and scanning services, and laptops, portable power chargers, and other equipment you can borrow for use in the Library.

SCIS Commons

Located on the 10th floor of 3675 Market Street, the SCIS Commons is an open lab and collaborative work environment for students. It features desktop computers, a wireless/laptop area, free black-and-white printing, and more collaborative space for our students. Community members have access to 3675 Market's fully equipped conference room with 42” displays and videoconferencing capabilities. The SCIS Commons provides technical support to students, faculty, and professional staff. In addition, the staff provides audio-visual support for all presentation classrooms within 3675 Market. Use of the SCIS Commons is reserved for all students taking SCIS courses.

The computers for general use are Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS machines with appropriate applications which include the Microsoft Office suite, various database management systems, modeling tools, and statistical analysis software. Library-related resources may be accessed at the SCIS Commons and through the W.W. Hagerty Library. SCIS is a member of the "Azure Dev Tools for Teaching” platform that allows students free access to a wide array of Microsoft software titles and operating systems.

The SCIS Commons, student labs, and classrooms have access to networked databases, print and file resources, and the Internet via the University’s network. Email accounts, Internet and BannerWeb access are available through Drexel's Office of Information Resources and Technology.

Computer Support for Teaching

The SCIS server room houses a multitude of servers to support faculty research, staff operations, and student learning. Services provided include a Linux compute cluster which is open to all faculty, staff, and students, multiple virtualization environments to meet different needs of faculty, staff, and students, and other single-purpose servers to support various operations throughout the school. The compute cluster provides a common environment for students to develop software, which makes testing easier for the TAs and faculty. Our virtualization environments allow community members the flexibility of a cloud environment with local support and direct cost recovery options. For those who need dedicated hardware, we also support dedicated research systems.

Classrooms are outfitted with laser projectors, 4K displays, class capture hardware, and the Wolfvision Cynap. The Cynap controls the AV distribution throughout the room and can display up to 4 streams simultaneously. These include the local PC, a laptop connected directly to the podium, or up to 4 streaming devices. Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices can all connect wirelessly to the presentation system, allowing collaboration and freedom to roam the classroom for better interactivity. Wireless networking and outlets are also available for students throughout the classrooms. Laptops are available for checkout from the SCIS Commons desk.

Additionally, SCIS hosts and supports multiple Virtual Computing Lab environments for students to use that mimics our physical computer labs. This technology allows both online and face to face students to have the same experience when using computing facilities.

SCIS Virtual Environments

SCIS hosts a variety of virtual environments, which support all levels of research, academics, and administration. These include OpenStack, Proxmox VE, VMWare, and Xen architectures, backed by storage in CEPH. Multiple environments allow SCIS IT to provide researchers with the level of control appropriate for the project at hand and make efficient use of project funding. External cloud vendors such as AWS and Google Cloud Platform are also used when appropriate.

SCIS continues to invest in these virtual environments, and explores emerging environments, to continue to best support research and teaching. CPU cores, storage, and memory are added at every opportunity to these flexible, scalable environments. The current capacity of the system includes:

• 1760 CPU Cores
• 6 TB of Memory
• Over 556 TB of HDD-backed storage
• 122 TB of high-performance SSD-backed storage
• 12 GPUs with room for expansion through funded research for high-performance computing needs

Cyber Learning Center

The Cyber Learning Center (CLC), located in 3675 Market Street's SCIS Commons student computer lab, provides consulting and other learning resources for students taking courses offered by the Computer Science Department. The CLC is staffed by graduate and undergraduate computer science students from across SCIS.

The CLC and SCIS Commons serve as a central hub for small group work, student meetings, and TA assistance. 

Research Laboratories

SCIS houses multiple research labs, led by SCIS faculty, in 3675 Market Street including: the Metadata Research Center (MRC), Interactive Systems for Healthcare (IS4H) Research, Economics and Computation (EconCS), The TeX-Base Lab, SPiking And Recurrent SoftwarE (SPARSE) Coding, Human-System Evaluation and Analysis Lab (H-SEAL), Applied Symbolic Computation Laboratory (ASYM), Security and Privacy Analytics Lab (SePAL), Software Engineering and Analytics Research (SOAR), Software Engineering Research Group (SERG), Social Computing Research Group, Vision and Cognition Laboratory (VisCog). For more information on these laboratories, please visit the our research web page.