Computer Science, MSCS—Align (Arlington)

Master of Science in Computer Science—Align students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, with undergraduate majors including math, biology, history, engineering, and classics. The program begins with a two-semester introductory sequence, which provides the foundational knowledge for students from nontechnical backgrounds to succeed. Students have an opportunity to acquire both the knowledge needed to transition into a new career and the practical skills to build the next great app. 

MS Thesis Committee

The MS thesis committee must satisfy the following conditions:

1. A total of three members, including the advisor. 

2. Two members from Khoury College of Computer Sciences (or affiliated to Khoury). 

3. At least one member who is at arm’s length from the particular work in the thesis. This means that there should be at least one member who isn’t a co-advisor on the thesis. 

4. External members are allowed but not required. 

More members (internal or external) can be added as readers to the committee, so long as the above minimum requirements are fulfilled. 

Complete all courses and requirements listed below unless otherwise indicated.

Align Bridge Coursework 

Students are required to take all bridge courses unless otherwise determined by the program.

A grade of B or higher is required in each course.

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Fundamentals
CS 5001 and CS 5003	Intensive Foundations of Computer Science and Recitation for CS 5001	4
Discrete Structures
CS 5002	Discrete Structures	4
Object-Oriented Design
CS 5004 and CS 5005	Object-Oriented Design and Recitation for CS 5004	4
Additional ALIGN courses
CS 5008 and CS 5009	Data Structures, Algorithms, and Their Applications within Computer Systems and Recitation for CS 5008	4

Core Requirement

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Algorithms
CS 5800	Algorithms	4

Breadth Areas

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Complete 12 semester hours from two of the following breadth areas:
Artificial Intelligence and Data Science
CS 5100	Foundations of Artificial Intelligence
CS 5150	Game Artificial Intelligence
CS 5200	Database Management Systems
CS 5330	Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision
CS 6120	Natural Language Processing
CS 6140	Machine Learning
CS 6200	Information Retrieval
CS 6220	Data Mining Techniques
CS 6240	Large-Scale Parallel Data Processing
CS 7140	Advanced Machine Learning
Systems and Software
CS 5400	Principles of Programming Language
CS 5500	Foundations of Software Engineering
CS 5520	Mobile Application Development
CS 5600	Computer Systems
CS 5610	Web Development
CS 5700	Fundamentals of Computer Networking
CS 5850	Building Game Engines
CS 6410	Compilers
CS 6510	Advanced Software Development
CS 6620	Fundamentals of Cloud Computing
Theory and Security
CS 6760	Privacy, Security, and Usability
CS 7805	Complexity Theory
CY 5770	Software Vulnerabilities and Security
CY 6740	Network Security

Electives

Course List

Code	Title	Hours
Complete 12 semester hours from the following:		12
CS 5097	Mixed Reality
CS 5100 to CS 7980
CS 7990	Thesis
CS 8674	Master’s Project
CS 8982	Readings
CY 5001	Cybersecurity: Technologies, Threats, and Defenses
CY 5010	Cybersecurity Principles and Practices
CY 5130	Computer System Security
CY 5210	Information System Forensics
CY 6120	Software Security Practices
DS 5110	Essentials of Data Science
DS 5230	Unsupervised Machine Learning and Data Mining

Program Credit/GPA Requirements

36–44 total semester hours required
Minimum 3.000 GPA required