Doctoral Program in Robotics (PhD) – How To Apply
Application Questions
Most application questions (deadlines, document submission, TOEFL/GRE score questions, etc.) will be answered by visiting the SCS – Doctoral Admission’s Frequently Asked Questions page. The PhD program application is available via School of Computer Science’s graduate application portal.
- Graduate Admissions Overview
- Frequently Asked Question
- Graduate Application Instructions
- Graduate Application Fee Waiver
Prerequisites
It is each student’s personal responsibility to arrive with, or to acquire rapidly thereafter, basic understanding (at the level of an introductory undergraduate course) in the following areas:
- Mathematics: calculus, linear algebra, numerical analysis, probability and statistics
- Computer Science: programming, data structures, algorithms
- Physics and Engineering: mechanics, dynamics, electricity and magnetism, optics
Financial Assistance
Students accepted into the Robotics Doctoral Program are awarded a Graduate Fellowship for each academic year until graduation. The fellowship award is renewed as long as the student maintains good standing in the program. It is not necessary to request financial aid.
The Graduate Fellowship includes tuition, activity fees, and a stipend. The department also pays a dependency allowance that is 10% of the Robotics monthly base stipend per eligible dependent provided that your spouse or qualifying domestic partner earns less than 15% of the stipend amount.
Fellowship Resource Advising Center
Students are encouraged to apply for support from outside Carnegie Mellon (fellowships, foreign government grants, etc.). Also, see the Fellowship Resource Advising Center. As an incentive to seek funding from other sources, we award a supplemental stipend to any student who pursues and obtains external funding.
Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition Option
The Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition offers an interdisciplinary training program operated jointly with affiliated doctoral programs at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The affiliated programs include Robotics, Computer Science, Psychology, and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon, and Mathematics, Psychology, and the Program in Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh.
The CNBC option for Robotics Ph.D. students allows them to combine intensive training in RI with a broad exposure to cognitive science, neural computation, and other disciplines that touch on problems of higher brain function. Students must also be separately admitted to the CNBC program; they fulfill the same basic requirements as regular Ph.D. students in Robotics but have additional requirements to fulfill.
Read More about the CNBC Option
Dual Degree Ph.D. Program in Robotics
The educational offering of the CMU Portugal Program comprises world-class Dual Degree Ph.D. Programs and is committed to preparing students to be world-class researchers, creating knowledge and artifacts that can impact our society. Graduates of the program will take a leading role in the research and development of future generations of integrated robotics technologies and systems. The student will be awarded with a dual degree Ph.D. conferred by CMU and another by a Portuguese partner University. During the Ph.D., the student should comply with the regulations of both Universities.