Ph.D. students with master’s degrees must complete a minimum of 18 credit units, including 4 units of general education and 14 units from their chosen major.

Ph.D. students with only bachelor degrees must complete a minimum of 29 credit units, including 6 units of general education and 23 units from their chosen major.

The courses offered to Ph.D. students are the same as those offered to master’s students.

Ph.D. students need to pass the Oral Qualification Exam in the first two to three years. In the examination, candidates are required to present their selected topic and research proposal including innovative ideas and preliminary results. The exam is conducted by a qualification committee.

Ph.D. candidates need at least two years to do research and compose their dissertations. They need to pass the pre-defense, conducted by a pre-defense committee, three months before their final defense. All the dissertations go through a rigorous review process by eight reviewers including three anonymous reviewers recommended by China Computer Federation (CCF). A candidate needs to pass the final defense conducted by a final defense committee with external reviewers.

Prior to the completion of the Ph.D. program, all Ph.D. candidates must publish at least four papers, among them, either one paper is in top conferences or refereed journals with Science Citation Indexed (SCI), or two papers are Engineering Indexed (EI) and one of them in a refereed journal.