Post Undergrad Comp. Graphics Studies in the U.S.?

AliParr asks: "Having just completed my first degree, BSc Hons Visualization at Teesside University in England, I am considering continuing on to Post-Graduate study. While courses in the United Kingdom are fine, I have always fancied studying abroad, or more specifically, in the states. Finding a course/university seems an overwhelming process however and I'm struggling to know where to start. My interests are Computer Science and Graphics based, with my first degree centering on C++/OpenGL/DirectX and general graphics algorithms. I was wondering if fellow Slashdot readers could give guide me as to the best places to look, and maybe shed some light on their experiences."

Comments

Mississippi State University

[Yerase]

Mississippi State University has a good program, both in Computer Science and Computer Engineering, that focuses on Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization. They also have a close working relationship with the DoD's 4 supercomputing centers (MSRC's) via the PET program. You can find info on the DOD, MSRC's, & PET on http://aspen.ucs.indiana.edu/pet/

What about...

[JustOK]

What about Canada? Lotsa universities here.

Re:What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

McMaster University has a software engineering and game design graduate program here.

It's not exactly graphics and visualization though.

Canada's a world leader in statistical image processing (identifying physical/chemical properties using images/NIR) which has wide-ranging applications in industry (Frito-Lay is using it to detect crunchiness and spiciness in Doritos), but I don't think the OP is looking into that....

TestMagic: advice on getting into grad school

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get advice on programs and admissions from your peers here: (international students trying to get into U.S./Canadian programs)

TestMagic

Look under the graduate forums. Hordes of people discussing how to get through GREs, get Financial aid from various schools etc. Most people on the board are Indians, but you have your odd Australian, Briton, American etc.

Some of these people really know how to work the system...

Canadian Chamber of Commerce needs new slogan.

[solomonrex]

"Lotsa universities here."

And apparently, they teach American English 101.

I suggest you reconsider graduate studies when you're asking to upgrade what is essentially craftsmanship. Post-graduate work should be for research, not job skills and experience.

Re:Canadian Chamber of Commerce needs new slogan.

[cecille]

While I'm not sure where the focus of the poster's prgram was, I'm not sure it's fair to say that it can't be spun into an interesting and relevant grad degree.

At my university (U of Guelph in Ontario, Canada), there were several profs doing research in imaging. For my final year project I worked on 3D image reconstruction worked with a prof whose research is in imaging and signal processing. His work is in a number of different areas, working mostly with adaptive or frozen neural netowrks for compression and also for medical imaging (working with the vet school and some hospitals). There's also a lot of work being done with 3D image reconstruction from single-camera sources, doing work on underwater wreckage and pearl harbour video, if I recall correctly. There were also a number of profs (I believe) doing work in medical imaging (the school has a biomedical eng program as well, so it works nicely).

My suggestion would first be to determine what kind of reserach you want to do, and then find a prof who is doing something in your field that you find really interesting. Then contact the prof and say you're interested and want to know if they're looking for students. Then take a good hard look at the policy that the school has in place for international students to make sure that it's actually going to be feasible to go there because grad school in the states (anywhere really) can get expensive if you're coming from out of the country.

Narrow down your choices first maybe?

[Ankh]

Start by asking yourself what you expect to get out of studying in another country, and why that country in particular.

There are some Canadian universities that at least at one time were very good for post-graduate graphics work, for example, and I think one in Singapore.

Note also that a Masters in North America is treated like a BSc in the UK, so you'll probably have to do a Master's before you can do further studies, but the master's degree in the US might only be one year. So there are some differences in terminology.

One approach to help you decide might be to investigate authors of up-to-date graduate level text books, and people who are publishing interesting papers (e.g. ACM SIGGRAPH), see where they are teaching, and see what some of their past students have done.

Another obvious approach is to compare the Web sites of some of the schools (as they call them) that interest you, and see what the course looks like. If the Masters in Graphics requires a course in Adobe PhotoShop and another in Adobe Illustrator, it's probably not what you want! (and yes, there are courses with such requirements).

The level of teaching varies wildly, much more than you might expect, as does the cost. Canada tends to be cheapr than the US if that helps any.

If you are going abroad to get a different experience, you'll find Kentucky State University very different from the University of California, and that in turn is different from MIT (in Cambridge, MA, a conurbation with Boston). My husband did a degree in Fine Art in upstate New York (maybe 8 hours' drive from New York city) and the people in the town there are very conservative and "redneck", openly racist and homophobic (e.g. a pizza store that didn't serve blacks), but on the other hand a wonderful faculty and campus. Horrible weather though, with nine feet of snow in one or two weeks in the winter, and over 100F with high humidity in the summer.

In general the two coasts of the US tend to be more tolerant than the middle of the country. If you are not white, the North is a better bet than the South.

So, narrow down your choices by listing your priorities, and maybe post them here. Then go and do some research. You can also email people teaching computer graphics, or working in industry, and ask their opinion, but make sure you do some research first, so you don't just waste their time.

Liam

Re:Narrow down your choices first maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

In general the two coasts of the US tend to be more tolerant than the middle of the country. If you are not white, the North is a better bet than the South.

Yeah, you want to avoid those horrible people who make generalizations about others. As opposed to those enlightened folks who are experts on the South because they briefly lived in Rochester or Syracuse.

Re:Narrow down your choices first maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Masters in North America is treated like a BSc in the UK

I haven't heard about that one....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Science

I guess it depends whether you do a coursework Master's or a thesis-based Master's. I know many people who went on to a Ph.D. in top UK schools like Imperial College with only a Master's degree from a North American school. Examples abound if you check the qualifications of faculty in many Canadian unversities.

I do know that in Scotland they call their first degree a Master's degree from tradition.

Re:Narrow down your choices first maybe?

[Ankh]

From the wikipedia article you mention:

In the UK it is sometimes awarded for an undergraduate course whose final year consists of higher-level courses and a major research project

and, under North America, The master's degree is intermediate between a bachelor's degree and a doctorate.

People in the UK generally are (or used to be) unlikely to get a Master's unless they are going on to do a PhD and didn't get a First or 2-1 (an "A" if you prefer). But in North America un undergraduate degree isn't valued as much (and is perhaps easier to get), so e.g. employers or research institutes may look for a master's.

So what I meant is that the names are not exactly equivalent, not that someone with a Master's degree from the US, going to the UK, will be treated as if they had only an undergraduate degree!

Re:Narrow down your choices first maybe?

[neilmoore67]

I do know that in Scotland they call their first degree a Master's degree from tradition.

A few Scottish universities call their first arts degrees "MAs" (the "ancient" ones: Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews). You have the absurd situation that a (probably harder) degree in a science or other subject gets you a BSc whereas an arts degree gets you an MA.

Re:Don't waste your time

[Anonymous Coward]

On the otherhand, you could clearly benefit from some reading comprehension courses. The submitter is looking for grad schools, not another 4 year degree (BA/BS, etc). The submitter named C++ as a current skill, not an end goal. And finally, at no point did the submitter suggest interest in the "computer graphics" industry, for which you list a few members of the entertainment side. Given an honors degree in visualization, a research lab, medical imaging company, or academic position are more likely goals.

Check GPGPU.org forums

[ccweigle]

There was a recent thread on the GPGPU forums about picking a grad program for studying graphics. Since pretty much everyone there is either studying graphics or practicing them, you may get better responses than from here.

Georgia Tech

[secondsun]

Try the Georgia Institue of Technology. The College of Computing has an awesome graphics graduate program. People you should contact are Jarek Rossignac and Greg Turk. Those are the two professors who I am most familar with, but there are more.

Those are the links to each's homepages. From there you can browse out to their works, papers, projects, etc. Feel free to drop them a line.

Hope the best

Re:Georgia Tech

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I second that. The GT College of Computing has an excellent Graphics and Visualization Unit, which also gets involved with research through the Georgia Tech Research Institute (their research arm).

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/

Here is some

[Fr05t]

http://www.unb.ca/
http://www.utoronto.ca/

Because Canada is more fun.

Vizlab

[jonabbey]

Take a look at Texas A&M's VizLab. They're a part of the school of architecture there, but they do graduate training in computer graphics, generally. A lot of their grads go on to work in the movie business.. Pixar, PDI, Sony, etc.

it IS an overwhelming process.

[lliiffee]

Applying and getting accepted to CS grad school in the US is an extremely drawn out and painful process, even for US citizens. The method I advise for you is this:

1) Find the US News and World Report rankings of the top 50 programs. (You can ignore the exact rankings, but this is a good list of 50 schools to look at.)

2) For each (yes!) school, go the the faculty, and find those (if any) who have interests in graphics. Read their web pages and papers. Make a list of all faculty that would be interesting to work with. (To a first approximation the shool you go to does not matter. What matters, TREMENDOUSLY, is who your advisor is.)

3) If possible, correspond with the above faculty.

4) Apply to each school (shoot for 10 or more- competition is extremely high these days) who has at least one faculty whose research is interesting. This will cost you, with application fees running around 50-100USD each. (But you are in England- treasure those exchange rates!)

5) (If you get in) Profit!

Also note that to get in, you principally need LETTERS OF RECOMENDATION FROM PROFESSORS WHO CAN VOUCH FOR YOUR ABILITY TO DO RESEARCH. Grades, test scores, etc are somewhat important, but the above trumps all.

Personal Goals?

[oldCoder]

If you're planning on becoming a researcher/academic, your plans make some sense.

But if you're planning on becoming a practitioner, think again. There is clearly an increasing world glut of software developers. To make decent money you'll need to start your own business. To do that you'll want some business education.

A business education without a technical background isn't good enough to go into business in computers (although Steve Ballmer did okay). But a purely technical background will likely leave you obsolete in 10 or 15 years. And that means unemployed. Graphics is hot right now, but the dot-com bubble was hot a few years ago and in the 1950's the carpet industry was hot (really). If you're going to be a techie you'll be competing with third-world developers for the next several decades.

There are some with purely technical education that did well in startups (Bill Joy) but the numbers are down in the thousands, worldwide.

Trends, of course, could reverse. The third world countries making software engineers in such large numbers just might start making chips by the billions. Would a world awash in CPU's increase the market demand for software and hence for developers? Or will they all be running the same code? Will half the world be employed writing code for the other half? Stay around and find out.

Mod parent up!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so I may be tad biased (I got my masters in Computer Engineering from Mississippi State )

smoke me a kipper

[ajayrockrock]

am I the only one that read, "BSc" as "Bronze Swimming Certificate'?

Re:smoke me a kipper

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Why the US?

[Dibblah]

Leapfrog the US. Go to India, China or one of the developing nations.

Re:Why the US?

[doktor-hladnjak]

Uh, ya. Now explain to me why thousands of students from those countries (usually the best ones at that) continue to pursue graduate course work in North America and Europe.

Thanks! And more details...

[AliParr]

Firstly, let me say Thank You all for the interesting and informative comments. You've certainly given me a starting idea and foothold. Let me give a few more details, to help refine your suggestions :) "The submitter is looking for grad schools, not another 4 year degree (BA/BS, etc). The submitter named C++ as a current skill, not an end goal. And finally, at no point did the submitter suggest interest in the "computer graphics" industry, for which you list a few members of the entertainment side. Given an honors degree in visualization, a research lab, medical imaging company, or academic position are more likely goals." This I couldn't agree with more. Firstly, I believe my C++ skills to be of a high standard, alongside my Real-Time graphics abilities. For reference (I didn't want to sound like boasting in the actual submit) - I achieved a First Class Honours degree, with an 85%+ average. While the university was originally a Poly, some 20 years back, it has come on leaps and bounds in recent times, and has truly one of the best Vis courses in the country. So, rather than learning 'Games Programming', or something similar, I am intersted in the more academic nature of visualisation. Medical, or even Criminology style visualisation techniques I find most interesting. With that said however, I do not want to end up a pure 'academic'. My reasons for continuing study are that I'm relatively young (20), and am keen to experience another culture before I get settled into a job. Also, the graduate IT industry in the UK is ridiculously competitive, and I feel I need a postgrad qualitification to help set me apart. Thanks once more guys.

Re:Thanks! And more details...

[Anonymous Coward]

Culture??? Sorry, but you've chosen the WRONG country. Don't you watch the news about us? Not only do we NOT have a culture, but everyone else (except you guys) hates us!

Re:Thanks! And more details...

[batemanm]

While the university was originally a Poly, some 20 years back

It was origianlly a college (open in 1930) and change to being a poly in 1969. It changed to a university in '92 along with all the other polys, so some 13 years back.

graduate IT industry in the UK is ridiculously competitive

It shouldn't be if you have a 1st.

Good luck in the applications.

Re:Thanks! And more details...

[Syrae]

I just finished my B.S. in the States, and I just finished getting accepted to grad school. I was interested in graphics more than visualization, but at the time I was researching, I didn't know the difference. (I know I prefer graphics now.)

I'm a native of California, so I'm a bit biased, but when I went looking for schools, I concentrated on schools on the West Coast. Of the schools I found, UC Davis seemed to have a very strong visualization program. They have an "institute" which means that sub-division of Computer Science that is more or less independant of a lot of the other politics in the department. (http://www.idav.ucdavis.edu/) They say they do graphics, but that's a small subset of what they do, which is primarily viz based stuff. I've toured their facilities twice, and they have some interesting stuff. In one lab they have four screens stuck together to form a larger screen about 2m x 2m (or so). In another lab, they have a lot of 3D interactive equipment, and a huge screen in there that takes up an entire wall. (Almost 4m x 4m, I'd say.) They can use gloves and 3D goggles to "look" around and manipulate the enviroment. They also have an older 3D scanner, and they're getting in another 3D (with three walls covered with screens, as well as the floor) that will be called "The Cave" and allow them to work with Geologists to display their data in a large 3D interactive enviroment.

They guarantee that you will have desk space as a grad student (bonus), and they try hard to help you get financial aid. The profs are very nice in that department, especially Ken Day, who is in charge over there. Nice guy.

The only real reason I didn't go was that I didn't want to do viz! I opted for a more "well-rounded" department so I could explore a bit first before settling on a discipline.

USC

[Spleenl3oy]

USC has a pretty decent graphics program for their masters degree. The also have distance education so you could essentially stay where you are and get the degree.

The University of Iowa

[rjh]

The University of Iowa has a fairly good computer graphics crowd--Jim Cremer, Chris Wyman and others are actively engaged in this field. It's worth taking a look at.

ObDisclosure: I'm a grad student there, although not in computer graphics.

University of Virginia

[Anonymous Coward]

UVA has got some of the best graphics guys:
Greg Humphreys?, David Luebke?

These guys are really fun to work with.

A similar question

[Stalemate]

Anyone have experience with Florida State University? I am moving to Tallahassee next month and also considering starting work on my master's in computer science and just curious if any of you could tell me a little about FSU.

Re:A similar question

[badgoodbunny]

I personally think Tallahassee is a great place to live, so enjoy. FSU has a decent Computer Science program. They have been experiencing a lot of growth recently, and it remains to be seen what they do with it. They have a security program that's hooked up with the NSF and DoD scholarship for service program. They're better in some areas than others, and your experience would probably be most affected by who you work with and your area, as with most graduate programs.

Re:A similar question

[davechen]

I went to grad school with a FSU CS prof, Dave Banks. Really smart guy. He does research in computer graphics and scientific visualization. His dissertation was on visualizing 4-d surfaces, IIRC. Also funny in a strange way. He tends to look at the world from a slightly askew viewpoint.

read and code - don't go to school

[cypherz]

if you're gonna be a programmer, don't go to school. The only way to be a programmer is to write programs. I don't think they do too much of that in school anymore. :-)

Re:read and code - don't go to school

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yawn. Maybe the submitter actually wants to do something new and significant instead of being a code monkey gluing together other people's innovations?

Re:read and code - don't go to school

[cypherz]

And exactly why do you think that going to school will guarantee that the submitter will create innovations? There isn't much you can't learn about programming by reading and doing. Most of the really great coders I know are self taught.

Re:Teesside?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do hope you've got a 'proper' degree from a 'proper' Uni, cause the irony would be great.

Teeside is known as a great place to do 'new age' degrees, where else do you recommend doing a degre in computer graphics?

Your comments really aren't helpful, they just perpetuate old boy networks, which doesn't help anyone (excepet those in them obv.)

You total scoper

If you're interested in Graphics:

[psykocrime]

You might want to check out UNC - Chapel Hill. Their CS department has a strong bias towards graphics, visualization, virtual reality, etc.

Check the Department News Headlines and you'll see how a lot of the interesting stuff that comes out of UNC is graphics related. Likewise, look into their Major Research Areas page and you'll see Graphics and Image Analysis as one. Look at some of the stuff they're doing.

I'm not a big graphics guy myself (I'm more interested in AI, Distributed Computing and Software Engineering) so I can't really comment in much depth on what kind of stuff they're doing. But I know that they have a strong reputation as a good school for the folks who want to do research that's graphics and visualization related.

HTH.

Picking the right school

[Kennethn]

At the end of the day, studying in the US is only worth it if you can get into the top universities. USNews.com and Vault.com both has great guides to help you pick the right place to study. If you end up going to a below "tier 1" school, you'd be better off studying in the UK or Canada (as examples). The American job market is extremely competetive, and comming from the right school is the 'alpha & omega' when it comes to landing the good jobs.

Re:Teesside?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a degree from a former poly. With that degree I went on to get my Ph.D from a redbrick and I am now a fellow at the University of Oxford.

Now be a good chap and go back to your copy of the Sun and leave the serious discussions to the adults.

ACCAD at OSU.EDU

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if it's your thing try ACCAD at Ohio State University accad.osu.edu. The guys who developed renderman at pixar, creators of ice age were all graduates of the program.

Graphics Programs

[doktor-hladnjak]

A good starting place for information is this little document by Mike Gleicher who is a graphics prof at the University of Wisconsin. He gives a lot of general advice, but also some specific stuff for graphics which is helpful and otherwise hard to find.

Here's his list of places where major graphics research is going on in North America:

The "Big" Places for Graphics: (all of these places have LOTS of graphics students)

• Washington
• Stanford
• Georgia Tech
• UNC
• Utah
• MIT
• Brown
• British Columbia

Other Really good groups (smaller, more personable):

• Princeton
• Caltech
• NYU
• CMU (was big, but lots of people left)
• Toronto

Up and Coming Groups (newer groups with a small number of newer faculty in graphics)

• Berkeley
• Virginia
• Illinois
• USC

He also of course adds Wisconsin to the list too. I'd personally place it in the last category, since they have a small, young but respectable program. Generally, I agree with this list although there are probably a whole bunch of other places with just one faculty member doing good work.

Having spent time studying and researching in Europe, there are some good graphics groups there too. In the UK, I know of two places off hand: Cambridge (Malcolm Sabin doing stuff with surfaces and geometric modeling) and Bath (Phil Willis and some others). In Germany, there is the Max Planck Institute (which does everything in English and is a very strong group although I admit I used to work there, so I'm probably biased), TU Darmstadt (Alexa), RWTH Aachen (Kobelt) and Tuebingen (Strasser). In Switzerland, there is the ETH in Zuerich (Markus Gross), the EPFL in (I think) Lausanne (Nadia and Daniel Thalmann) and Basel (Thomas Vetter who not so long ago left Freiburg to start a new graphics group there). In France, there is a group at the INRIA in Grenoble (Marie-Paul Cani). The above is certainly not an exhaustive list, just names that come to mind off the top of my head.

Most of these programs in continental Europe probably require you to already have your MSc before beginning PhD studies, but some have MSc programs as well. I know the MPI has one and awards scholarships even to foreign students. Generally, it's easier to get funding with only a Bachelor's degree in the US than in most of Europe. I've also heard the funding situation in the UK is not really very good, which is probably another reason to consider places like the US, Canada, Germany or Switzerland.

Competition for admission to US schools is fairly intense and is a time consuming and expensive process, but there are some really amazing opportunities here. I'm currently a grad student (graphics, visualization and scientific computing) at UNC and we probably have the largest number of graphics and imaging faculty and grad students under one (academic) roof in the world. We're not as hard to get into as a lot of the top schools like Berkeley, MIT, Stanford or CMU, but we still only take about 1 in 7 applicants or something. The key is to apply to as many places as you can afford, but only apply to places you'd actually attend.

Happy searching!

Re:Teesside?

[Anonymous Coward]

Serious discussions? Adults? Clearly you must be new here

Don't expect to study any specific language/lib

[Anonymous Coward]

First year you are going to study heavy math and theory of graphics. Only going to write programs using C++/OpenGL/DirectX in the 25% final of your course. Be prepared.

Cornell

[TamMan2000]

Cornell University has a highly respected computer graphics program. I am not too familiar with it, other than the fact that I share a building with them...

I can tell you Ithaca NY, where Cornell is located, is wonderfull, unless you hate gloomy weather and long winters.

Gnomon School for 3D

[bholub]

If you decide you want to focus on graphics, I know a few people who attended Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, CA and have heard nothing but rave reviews. They all have great jobs now as well. You can see their site at: http://www.gnomon3d.com/

IDAV at UC Davis

[Anonymous Coward]

http://idav.ucdavis.edu/

One of the best graphics labs in the nation in one of the best towns in the nation.

The Ohio State University

[_randy_64]

The Ohio State University
Research at OSU