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PhD Program Emphasis Areas
Overview | Requirements | Emphasis Areas | Application | Contact Info
Students in the HCI PhD program may choose to focus their studies in certain areas of emphasis within HCI. Three of the possible emphasis areas are listed below. Selecting an emphasis area is not a requirement of the PhD program.
The Human-Computer Interaction Institute invites applications for PhD studies in the learning sciences and learning technologies, an emphasis area within the PhD program in Human-Computer Interaction. The faculty in the HCI Institute have a long history of successful research in the learning sciences and learning technologies. They have not only made advances in basic science and technology, but have also been successful in wide-spread adoption of their research through applications in use by learners around the country and around the world.
The Human-Computer Interaction Institute invites applications for PhD studies in social computing, an emphasis area within the PhD program in Human-Computer Interaction. The HCII faculty have a long history of successful research in computer-supported cooperative work, computer-mediated communication, and the social impact of technology. They successfully model interaction patterns in variety of online communities—from discussion groups to World of Warcraft—and apply theories from the social sciences to understand and improve social computing systems. Some PhD courses relevant to social computing students are available here.
Joint with the University of Pittsburgh, the HCII offers a PhD concentration in health sciences. This concentration gives HCII and other PhD students in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science with an interest in applying technology to problems of health care a deeper understanding of the health care context. It will also match a CMU student with a clinical-research mentor at UPMC. The concentration consists of five courses, two or three of which could also be used to fulfill existing HCII PhD requirements, and a research project co-advised by faculty member from the student's home department and a clinical researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. Students can take the health-care related courses without declaring the concentration or fulfilling the full concentration requirements.