M.S. and Ph.D. Programs

Combines a core physics curriculum with research and study in areas that also includes the application of physics to the broader scientific and engineering communities. Students may pursue research in any one of several broad areas, including nanoscience, advanced materials, condensed matter physics; renewable energy; quantum information and photonics; biological physics; astrophysics and plasma physics.

Individualized to suit students’ interests, backgrounds, and goals. Each student works closely with a major professor and a graduate special committee to determine degree requirements consistent with each student’s individual training and academic goals.

Design and develop processes, products and systems using biological, environmental science and engineering tools to create solutions for water, food, energy, and health issues. Collaborate across disciplines, innovate and adapt to technological and environmental changes to solve problems.

Conduct original research and complete a thesis as a steppingstone to a Ph.D. program or to prepare for a non-academic research career in areas like biochemical engineering, advanced materials processing, surface science, and more.

Pursue research in broad areas like environmental fluid mechanics and hydrology, environmental processes, environmental and water resource engineering, structural engineering, and transportation systems engineering.

Gain broad training in basic geological science, as well as field, theoretical and practical experience through research in a specialty such as geophysics, geochemistry and petrology, structural geology, sedimentology, marine ecology, energy resources and more.

Develop expertise in core materials science topics and tailor your studies in a specialty like bioinspired materials, electronics, energy, or green technology. Work with a faculty advisor on a research topic of our choice to succeed in careers in industry, government, and academia.

Combines academic rigor with a strong research component. Working with faculty advisors, M.S. student tailor their studies to their particular interests and backgrounds, incorporating core topics in mechanical engineering as well as specialized courses.

An on-campus, two-year program that combines academic rigor with a strong research component. Each student plans an individualized course of study that involves planning, optimizing, and executing multidisciplinary solutions to design and operational challenges in engineering, business, and the social sciences.

Emphasizes balance in aerospace science and technology, both basic and applied, to prepare students for the diverse opportunities at the frontiers of research, in contemporary industrial development, and in government agencies.

Based on a solid foundation in pure mathematics, which includes the fundamentals of algebra and analysis. It involves a grounding in the methods of applied mathematics and studies of scientific areas in which significant applications of mathematics are made.

A research-oriented program that provides a flexible graduate education tailored to individual interests. Evaluate different research opportunities before specializing. Combines a core physics curriculum with research and study that either applies physics to a technical discipline or investigates the interface between physics and another area of science.

Individualized to suit students’ interests, backgrounds, and goals. Each student works closely with a major professor and a graduate special committee to determine degree requirements consistent with each student’s individual training and academic goals.

Design and develop processes, products, and systems using basic biological, environmental science and engineering tools generates solutions to societal problems involving water, food, energy and public health.

Integrates engineering and the life sciences to prepare students for diverse careers in academe, industry, and government.The field focuses on both the molecular and macroscopic aspects of biomedical engineering and comprises five research areas: biomedical instrumentation; drug delivery, design and metabolism; biomaterials; computational and systems biology; and medical biomechanics.

Pursue original research and prepare for a career in academia. Our Ph.D. program is completed in four to five years, and students typically receive full funding. Our faculty are leading researchers and our facilities are continually upgraded with state-of-the-art equipment. You’ll be surrounded by a community of scholars that is contributing to something greater and embracing the founding principles of Cornell University. Our culture of collegiality is unmatched.

Research in civil and environmental engineering covers an extremely broad range of topics including environmental fluid mechanics and hydrology, environmental processes, environmental and water resource engineering, structural engineering, and transportation systems engineering.

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, software engineering, and theory of computation.

Ongoing research activities in electrical engineering involve both theory and experiment, and range from the atomic scale at which solid-state devices are studied to the global dimensions of geophysical plasmas. Projects concern the properties of materials, the fabrication of devices from these materials, the interconnection of devices to form systems, and the properties of systems, including control systems, computer systems, systems for transmitting power and information, and systems for processing signals and data.

Designed to give students broad training in the basic sciences as well as field, theoretical, and practical experience through research in their specialty. The program has particular strengths in geophysics, geochemistry and petrology, structural geology, sedimentology, marine ecology, and energy resources.

Information Science examines information systems in their social, cultural, economic, historical, legal, and political contexts. Computer science is an important part of the program, but the emphasis is on systems and their use, rather than on the technologies that underlie them. Information systems draws from computer science and operations research; human computer interaction from communication, psychology, and cognitive studies; social studies of computing from science & technology studies, law, and economics, with many others.

Focus of current advanced materials research at Cornell includes ceramics, complex fluids, metals, polymers and semiconductors in the form of thin films and in the bulk. Electrical, magnetic, mechanical, optical, and structural properties are investigated. Some special topics of interest are composites, inorganic-organic hybrids, nanocomposites, organic optoelectronics, and, in relation to the structure of materials, the investigation of grain boundaries, surfaces and structural defects. Also studied are materials synthesis and processing and solid state reactions in model systems. Many faculty are involved in electronic packaging.

Emphasizes the foundations of mechanical sciences. The faculty is particularly strong and active in biomechanical engineering, fluid dynamics, turbulence, combustion, thermal systems engineering, multiphase flows, energy and power systems, transport processes in microgravity, mechanical systems and design, control and robotics, dynamics and control of space structures, mechanics of materials and materials processing, materials microgravity sciences and computational mechanics.

Students concentrate in one of three areas: applied probability and statistics, manufacturing systems engineering, and mathematical programming. Doctoral students also select two minor subjects for the Ph.D. degree, one of which must be outside the field. A minor may be in operations research or in a subject offered in another field, such as computer science, econometrics and economic statistics, environmental systems engineering, managerial economics, mathematics, or planning theory and systems analysis.

Combines expertise across science and engineering, including mechanism design, modeling, dynamics, control, hardware, actuators, sensing, data science, machine learning, computing, and social science. Furthermore, with the recent surge in robotics applications, industry investment, and public discourse regarding autonomous systems, robotics is moving beyond an academic specialty to having a large societal impact.

Students graduate this program with a broad set of skills, from the ability to interact collaboratively with researchers in applied fields, through the formulation and computational implementation of novel statistical models and methods to demonstrating mathematically that these methods have desirable statistical properties.

A transdisciplinary degree that encourages students to create innovative solutions for complex systems. Students  pursue research focused on planning, optimizing and executing multi-disciplinary solutions for design and operational problems in engineering, business, the social sciences, and combinations of these.

Provides a strong background in engineering science and applied mathematics, which prepares students to carry out high-quality analytical or experimental research and to handle a wide variety of modern engineering problems. Coursework provides a broad education in the mechanics of rigid and deformable bodies, applied mathematics, and modern experimental techniques.