TTIC Prospective Students

TTIC Ph.D. Program

The Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago offers a graduate program leading to a doctorate in computer science, and focuses primarily on:

TTIC is proud of its PhD program, designed to prepare students for academic or research careers. Graduates have gone on to tenure-track positions at Cornell University, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of Edinburgh, Yale University, the University of Waterloo, and Purdue University. Graduates have also obtained research positions at MIT CSAIL, Princeton/IAS, University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, Caltech, Adobe Research, Google Research, Meta AI Research and Microsoft Research, to name a few.

Every TTIC student is assigned an interim advisor upon entering the program. The interim advisor introduces the student to practices of carrying out original research, by engaging them in directed research. During the first two years of the program, students also focus on coursework aimed at building a foundation of knowledge that will enable them to more fully develop their computer science research skills.

To complete the PhD program a student must make an original and significant contribution to the field of computer science described in a PhD thesis. Every TTIC student has a primary advisor among the Institute’s tenure-track faculty, and has ample opportunity to work on research with all TTIC faculty, including tenure-track, research-track and adjoint faculty, and to collaborate with University of Chicago researchers, our shared-campus partners.

In addition to the PhD thesis, all students will serve at least one quarter as a teaching assistant, develop presentation skills necessary to present their original research, and complete a programming project. Students receive periodic evaluation of their progress, and must make satisfactory progress to continue in the program. All PhD program requirements are described in the Academic Program Guide.

TTIC is located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago on the University of Chicago campus and has a close affiliation with the University of Chicago Department of Computer Science. An agreement between the University of Chicago and TTIC allows cross-listing of computer science course offerings between the two institutions, providing students from each institution the opportunity to register in the other’s courses. Students enjoy full privileges of the University library system, athletic facilities, health and wellness services, student support services, student organizations, and more. Learn more about the TTIC, University of Chicago Relationship.

Why TTIC?

World-class faculty in TTIC’s research areas.

Personal attention. A 4:1 student-to-faculty ratio, and faculty with a low teaching load so they can spend more time working with their students.

Well-funded. Every student gets a competitive stipend, funded by internal TTIC funds or faculty research grants, as well as equipment funds and significant travel funds. Students generally only TA one or two quarters out of their entire PhD.

Access to state-of-the-art computational facilities.

An excellent space that underwent a full renovation over the summer of 2020.

A highly active research environment with colloquium speakers, reading groups, workshops, and access to a wide range of collaborators including Research Assistant Professors, visiting/adjoint faculty, postdocs, and more.

Full access to University of Chicago courses, campus, facilities & resources.

Living in the vibrant, culturally rich city of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Recent student awards include an ALT 2024 Outstanding Paper Award (Students Gene Li and Naren Manoj, Prof. Avrim Blum, and collaborators), ASRU 2023 Best Student Paper Award (Students Chung-Ming Chien and Ju-Chieh Chou, UChicago student Mingjiamei Zhang, and Prof. Karen Livescu), CRAC 2023 Best Paper Award (Student Shubham Toshniwal, Prof. Kevin Gimpel, and Prof. Karen Livescu), 2021 Best Paper Award, COLT (Blake Woodworth), 2021 Google PhD Fellowship (Freda Shi), 2020 Google PhD Fellowship (Mingda Chen), 2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (David Yunis), 2019 Google PhD Fellowship (Blake Woodworth) Best Student Paper Award, COLT 2019 (Student Omar Montasser and Profs. Steve Hanneke, and Nati Srebro), and Best Student Paper Award, COLT 2019 (Student Blake Woodworth and Prof. Nati Srebro).

Finally, recognizing that high-level work requires a supportive and healthy environment, TTIC also provides student peer mentors, funding for student-led social activities and community building, opportunities for outreach and community engagement, opportunities for attending networking events, English as a second language tuition scholarships, and a variety of institute-planned social activities.