Joint CMU-Pitt Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology

Robert F. Murphy and Ivet Bahar, Directors

Home

Curriculum - Procedures for Ph.D. Proposal Exam

Students are expected to defend their thesis proposal no later than the end of their fifth semester in the program (not counting summers). Extensions of this date must be submitting in writing to the program directors no later than eight weeks before the end of the semester in which the defense would normally occur.

The student and his/her advisor(s) should decide upon the members of the thesis committee, which should consist of at least four faculty members. At least three members must be from the Program training faculty and there must be at least one from the CMU training faculty and at least one from the Pitt training faculty. The thesis advisor(s) is/are part of the thesis committee and serve as the chair.

The student is responsible for obtaining the agreement of all committee members that they are willing to serve, and to find a date and time that is suitable for the whole committee. The list of committee members and the defense date should be communicated to the program directors no later than eight weeks prior to the date on which the exam is to be taken.

The student should prepare a written thesis proposal and provide it to the thesis committee no later than seven (7) calendar days before the defense (students should ask the committee members whether they would like to receive this document electronically or on paper).

The thesis proposal should consist of no more than 12 single-spaced pages with 1 inch margins. This limit does not include references, which can consist of no more than 5 additional pages. You can also append higher-resolution versions of figures as long as the original version is contained within the proposal. The proposal should describe

the background and significance of the proposed project,
the overall goal and specific aims to be accomplished,
the methods and approaches to be used,
the preliminary results that have been obtained to support the feasibility of the project, and
the way in which the results obtained will be evaluated.

Note that previous work by others (including by anyone within the advisor(s)'s group(s) other than the student defending) should be included in the background and significance section, not in the preliminary results section.

The student should also prepare an oral presentation of the proposal lasting no more than 45 minutes (not counting time for questions). The thesis committee will then question the student on the proposed work and any related material in order to determine whether the proposed work is suitable for a Ph.D. thesis and whether the student is adequately prepared to engage in the proposed research.

At the conclusion of the exam, the committee shall determine whether the student has passed or failed and communicate this result to the program directors. A student may retake the Ph.D. thesis proposal exam no more than once.