MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
The objective of the program of study leading to the doctoral degree is to give the student comprehensive knowledge of nuclear science and engineering and to develop competence in original research.
General requirements of the Institute for the doctorate are given in Section 2 of the MIT Course Catalogue and the Graduate School Policy and Procedures. The specific requirements of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department are presented here. The five principal parts of the doctoral program are the Math and Physics Competency Requirement, the Engineering Requirement, the General Examination, the Core/Major/Minor Requirement, and the Doctoral Thesis. Upon satisfactory completion of this program the student will ordinarily receive the degree of Doctor of Philosophy unless a specific request for the degree of Doctor of Science is made. The requirements for both degrees are the same.
Students admitted for the SM or NE degree must apply to the NS&E Department Admissions Committee for admission to the doctoral program.
NS&E requires that all doctoral candidates demonstrate competency in undergraduate mathematics and physics prior to taking the General Exam. Such competency is normally demonstrated by passing the diagnostic exams upon entering the graduate program. These exams are offered early in the Fall semester. If a student does not pass both the math and physics questions, then the department will require the student to take (and pass with a grade of B or better) specific undergraduate subject(s) prior to taking the General Exam. The diagnostic exams cannot be repeated.
The Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering has a strong tradition of engineering and therefore expects all students to have studied and understood the engineering process. Engineering principles are normally taught in the undergraduate curriculum, and NS&E requires that all doctoral candidates demonstrate engineering competency prior to taking the General Exam. Such competency can be demonstrated either by taking a suitable undergraduate course (see list below), or by passing an exam in one of the specified engineering subjects. These exams are offered early in the Fall semester. Since the General Exam must be taken at the start of the Spring semester following three academic semesters of study, the Engineering Requirement must normally be met within the first three semesters of matriculating.
Engineering exams are offered in the following three areas:
Note that students will have two opportunities to sit for the Engineering Exam, the Fall semester of their arrival and the Fall semester of the following academic year. The Engineering Exam may be repeated.
The Engineering requirement can also be fulfilled by passing one of the following courses with a grade of B or better.
The choice of engineering subject should be discussed with the student's advisor, and approved by the registration officer.
Students who enter the department in the Masters program are not required to fulfill the Engineering requirement. If however they transfer to the doctoral program, then they must complete the Engineering requirement prior to taking the General Exam. Students who completed one of the above courses with a grade of B or better while in a program of study at MIT have fulfilled the Engineering requirement.
Students wishing to become candidates for the doctoral degree are required to pass a General Examination whose purpose is to establish intellectual potential as well as breadth and depth of knowledge. The structure of the exam is as follows.
The General Examination has two sections, the written component and the oral component. Both components must be passed in order to register for Doctoral Thesis credit. The General Exam is offered once per year, early in the spring semester. Only registered students are permitted to take the General Examination.
A Ph.D. student in Nuclear Science and Engineering admitted for the fall term is expected to take the General Exam in the spring of the following academic year. Students who fail the General Examination will normally be allowed to retake the exam one time. No regular graduate student is permitted to register in Nuclear Science and Engineering for more than six regular terms without having passed the General Examination. (A regular term is any fall or spring term.)
To take the General Examination students must have a cumulative Grade Point Average of at least 4.0 (5.0 is an A average for MIT GPA scale).
The written portion of the General Examination is comprised of two 3 hour sections. All potential Ph.D. candidates answer an hour and a half exam on Nuclear Physics based generally on the class material of 22.101.
The remaining four and a half hours of exam are given in the department's focus area. The questions cover material presented in both the core and in more specialized courses.
The oral portion of the General Examination is approximately 1.5 hours in length. It must be taken in the week to ten days immediately following the written exam. One question will be chosen by the committee based on the student's general area of specialization. The other question will be more narrowly based on the literature in the student's particular research area. The topic of the narrower question is to be chosen by the student in conjunction with his or her research supervisor, and registered with the Examination Supervisor one week before the examination is scheduled to be taken. If the topic is not so registered, the examination committee will choose the topic without further consultation with the student.
The purpose of the oral exam is to test students' ability to think spontaneously and soundly, and to communicate, about a technical problem or area for which they should have the technical background. The examining committee will conduct the exam to lead a student to such new areas, loosely related to the original question. The committee may exercise a wide range of discretion in the particulars of each individual oral exam, and consequently, different committees may vary in the details of how the oral exam is conducted.
Candidates for a doctoral degree must also satisfactorily complete with an average grade of B or better an approved program of advanced studies of not less than 84 credit hours of subjects excluding special problems, of which two subjects (24 units) are selected from the following department courses (the Core): 22.101, 22.105, 22.106. Three subjects (36 units) comprise a field of specialization (the Major) that will be closely related to the student's doctoral thesis topic. Two subjects (24 units) must consist of coordinated subjects clearly outside the field of specialization (the Minor). None of the 36 units selected by the student in the field of specialization (the Major) may be from the list of subjects specified for the General Examination questions chosen by the student.
The field of specialization should be arranged in consultation with, and have the approval of, the student's Registration Officer. Students should also consult with their thesis advisors regarding these fields.
Subjects used towards the minor cannot be from the student's area of concentration nor can they be specified as background for any questions taken by the student on the General Examination.
With the registration officer's concurrence, subjects in fields removed from those covered in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department may be used to fulfill the minor program. The program must be worth at least 24 credit units, and consist of at least two graduate subjects or three undergraduate subjects. Undergraduate subjects used to fulfill the minor requirement must be taken while registered as a graduate student in the department.
With the registration officer's concurrence, graduate courses taken at other institutions may be used to fulfill the minor requirement.
The Major and Minor programs should be arranged in consultation with, and have the approval of, the Registration Officer.
Subjects fulfilling the core, major, and minor requirements may be taken prior to the General Examination.
General Institute information relating to theses for advanced degrees is to be found in the Graduate School Policies and Procedures Manual (available at http://web.mit.edu/gso/gpp/index.html).
Doctoral research may be undertaken in nuclear science and engineering or in a related field under the supervision of a member of the faculty of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department or another Institute department. Theses can be primarily theoretical or experimental, or can combine both approaches.
Before selecting a topic for thesis research, students are advised to read the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department's current list of thesis topics and to speak to faculty members engaged in research in areas of interest to them. A student should then select a supervisor and work out together a proposed program of thesis research. In some cases, joint thesis supervision by more than one faculty member may be appropriate. The program must be approved by the Department before research may be initiated.
Where there is a single supervisor, there must be a thesis reader for each doctoral candidate. The reader will be solicited by the candidate after a thesis topic has been selected. The function of the reader is to read the prospectus and the final thesis report, and to comment on the progress and results of the work. Either the thesis supervisor or the reader must be a faculty member of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department. Both the thesis supervisor and the reader will sign acceptance of the final thesis.
The student, thesis supervisor, and reader shall meet formally at several specific stages during the thesis project, and a very brief record of those meetings will be prepared by the thesis supervisor for insertion in the student's file. These meetings should be held at three specific stages of the thesis project:
These meetings are to be organized by the student. The purpose is to insure that the supervisor, reader, and student are all in agreement with respect to the scope and quality of the thesis work. All participants will sign the summary report prepared by the thesis supervisor.
To facilitate the Departmental approval of the research subject that is required before research can be initiated, each candidate shall submit a brief thesis prospectus. This prospectus should be one or two typewritten pages in length and should contain a descriptive title of thesis, names of supervisor or supervisors, and faculty reader, general description of the problem, its significance and background information relating to the problem. Thesis registration is permitted in the term the General Examination is successfully completed, and the prospectus is to be submitted no later than the end of that term; failure to comply will result in refusal of thesis registration in further terms until a prospectus is submitted. An approved copy of the form listing the subjects to be taken to satisfy the Core/Major/Minor requirements (84 units) must be attached to the thesis prospectus for review by the thesis supervisor. Two copies of the approved prospectus must be submitted to the Department Graduate Office.
The prospectus will be reviewed by the supervisor, faculty reader and other interested members of the faculty. Unless informed to the contrary, the candidate may assume the prospectus has been accepted. If the prospectus is considered unacceptable, the candidate will receive, within one month of submittal, a written statement to the effect from the supervisor acting for the department. If this occurs, another prospectus must be submitted for approval.
The progress each student is making with the PhD thesis research will be reviewed by the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department graduate committee at least once each year. The purpose of the review is to see that adequate progress is being made toward completion of the research. If the progress of any student is considered unsatisfactory, the student will be warned, and in extreme cases may be denied further registration as a doctoral candidate and the research topic made available to another student. A thesis in final form must be submitted before the student's name will be recommended for the Institute Degree List.
All students registered for doctoral research are required to participate each regular term in the Seminar in Nuclear Science and Engineering, 22.911 (fall) and 22.912 (spring). Unless otherwise arranged, the subject of each candidate's seminar shall be the thesis research.
All calculations and records as well as any equipment or instrumentation developed during the thesis research are the property of the Institute, at the discretion of the supervisor. Upon completion of the thesis, each student should make arrangements with the thesis supervisor for the transfer of records and equipment.
As indicated in the Graduate School Policy and Procedures Manual, prior to submission of the final written thesis, a draft complete in all particulars is required for editorial comment and professional appraisals by the supervisor and reader. In planning a schedule, the student should realize that in excess of one month has customarily been required to complete the editorial comment, professional appraisal, required revisions and review.
Theses are to be submitted to the Department Graduate Student Office in sufficient number to provide the original and one copy for the MIT Library, one copy for each sponsor or fellowship donor from whom the candidate received financial support (not required for government or general Institute fellowship awards), and one electronic copy, in PDF form, on CD for the Departmental Reading Room. The form of submitted theses, their abstract (300 words maximum), and a completed MIT Doctoral Dissertation form, must conform with the Graduate Thesis Specifications (http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/thesis-specs/) as published by the MIT Library (refer to the Graduate School Policy and Procedures Manual and other posted information). All candidates must complete and submit the National Research Council form. One copy of the thesis is to be submitted to each supervisor and reader.
At the time the thesis is submitted, one copy of a thesis summary, signed by the thesis supervisor, must be submitted to the NS&E Graduate Student Office. The candidate will also provide the summary to each member of the examining committee. Thesis summaries usually run from five to fifteen pages in length and should be in the form of a professional journal preprint. They should present the important results and conclusions of the research as well as a brief discussion of the significance and possible applications of the work. Inclusion of summary tables and/or important figures is encouraged.
The candidate will be examined on the content of the thesis and on topics immediately related to it. The thesis defense may be scheduled to occur at any time after eight days have elapsed following submission of the thesis to the NS&E Graduate Office, in conformity with Institute and Department requirements for thesis presentation, but before the date grades are due for that term. The candidate shall arrange a time for the defense to meet the convenience of the examining committee. The examining committee shall include at least three members of the faculty of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department (of whom the supervisor(s) and reader may be two). The chairman of the committee shall be a faculty member who is not a supervisor or reader. Notice of the thesis defense committee, time, and place must be attached to each of the copies of the thesis summary. Thesis submissions will not be accepted without such a notice, conforming to these regulations. A thesis defense shall not proceed without satisfactory thesis submission being accepted.
Thesis defense examinations are open to the public. A notice of defense must be e-mailed to all NS&E faculty, staff, and students at least one week prior to presentation.
The chairman of the thesis defense committee will inform the Department Graduate Office of the result of the defense. Acceptance will be endorsed by the signatures of the supervisor and reader on the thesis title page, after the thesis defense.
The Nuclear Science and Engineering Department expects that all articles in all publications whose substance is extracted in whole or in part from a thesis in the Department shall be submitted to the thesis supervisor at MIT for comments and proofing before they are submitted to the appropriate journal. This step is taken to ensure that all works of the MIT Nuclear Science and Engineering Department which are submitted for publication be of high quality and meet the standards of the Department.
All articles whose substance is extracted in whole or in part from a thesis should indicate the departments of MIT with which all authors were associated at the time the research was conducted; present affiliations (if other than MIT) should be shown by a footnote to the authors' names.
The student and the thesis supervisor should agree on the basic contents of the articles which are to result from the thesis, methods of publication, appropriate journal, number of authors, and acknowledgements, prior to the student's termination of residence at MIT. In the case of a Ph.D. thesis, this should be done before the final oral examination of the thesis. In the case of an SM thesis, it should be done at the time of submission of the thesis.
It is normal practice for the staff supervisor to be the coauthor of articles resulting from theses. When authorship of a publication is shared by a member of the staff and a student, and there is no sponsoring project, help in meeting publication costs will be given by the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department.
*For students who entered the Department prior to August 1, 2003, please download the previous version of the graduate program requirements (PDF-Rev. 17).
