2022-2023 Undergraduate and Graduate Bulletin (without addenda)

Apr 30, 2024

2022-2023 Undergraduate and Graduate Bulletin (without addenda) [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Urban Systems, Ph.D.

The NYU Doctoral Studies program in Urban Systems offers an interdisciplinary learning and research environment designed to meet the needs of students pursuing careers in academia, research organizations, local and national governments and public service agencies. The Ph.D. program expands upon the unique legacy of decades of collaboration in education and research, development and training among the NYU faculty and city governments and industries. This program is administered by NYU Tandon in partnership with other NYU schools including: the Stern School of Business, Langone Health, Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and the Center for Urban Science and Progress and the Center for Connected Mobility C2SMART, This program aligns with the vision and commitment of the university to work within the ‘city as a lab’ to accelerate field deployment of innovative solutions to emerging urban needs, including sustainability and climate action, infrastructure and resilience, and public health and equity. This interdisciplinary laboratory of urban innovation brings together expertise and research excellence of NYU faculty in New York as well as global campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, and study abroad sites in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Florence, and Prague. Drawing from the expertise of the Urban Faculty across the university, we have built a unique and competitive interdisciplinary educational environment based on the following disciplinary pillars:

Data Science & Informatics
Communication and Information Science
Social Studies, Health and Policy
Systems Engineering
Economics, Finance, and Planning

The program is available to students with a variety of educational backgrounds pursuing their studies across disciplines, including Engineering, Environmental Science, Architecture, Urban Planning, Computing, Data Science, Systems Science, Economics, Finance, Public Policy, Social Sciences, and Public Health. Mastery of skills in mathematics, statistics, and programming is included in the course of study, depending on the need associated with the student’s dissertation topic.

Admissions

Application Requirements

Master or bachelor degree from an accredited program in physical and mathematical sciences, social sciences, or engineering (other fields upon approval of program administrator)
Minimum master and bachelor degree GPA of 3.5/4.0, and 3.0/4.0, respectively.
Submission of GRE and English language proficiency test scores

An applicant who has not yet earned a master’s degree may be directly admitted into the Ph.D. program with the written approval of the program director. Applicants with a master’s degree in any discipline other than Master of Science may be required to have prerequisites in the subjects listed below:

Calculus with analytic geometry
Statistics and probability
Introduction to computer programming.

In addition to these degree requirements and the NYU Tandon general admission requirements, acceptance to the program will depend on (1) academic excellence, (2) research interests congruent with areas of urban scholarship and faculty research at NYU including the global campuses, and (3) positive recommendations (e.g., from former employers or research advisors).

Note: Application and/or admission to the program does NOT require prior identification of a research advisor.

Curriculum

Degree Requirement

The Ph.D. curriculum includes 54 credits of graduate coursework beyond the bachelor’s degree and 21 credits of dissertation research, totaling 75 credits. The student may use 30 credits from an approved master’s degree completed within 10 years of admission to the program. The program also includes a qualifying exam, a research proposal, and the dissertation defense.

To earn a doctoral degree in Urban Systems, the candidate must meet the following requirements:

54 credits of graduate coursework (not including the Ph.D. dissertation) in relevant areas of study beyond the bachelor’s degree, with an average grade of B or better (cumulative average of 3.0 or better on a 0-4 scale). Up to 6 credits of the 54 credits may be satisfied by individual guided studies, readings, and projects.
Successful completion of the qualifying examination. The qualifying examination has a written section and an oral section. Composition of the written exam is based on the program’s three core courses, while the oral exam is designed to judge the student’s critical thinking. The qualifying exam is regularly administered at the end of second semester of the program. If the student does not pass the qualifying examination as result of unforeseen circumstances such as an illness etc., the student may request a retake of the examination, to be carried out within three months of the original exam. In such cases, the student must submit an examination retake request to the program director (along with supporting documents) within 1 week of receiving results of the original exam.
Approval of the dissertation proposal, which should be administered by end of February of year two of the program. The approved dissertation proposal signed by the dissertation committee is subsequently submitted to the program director.
Completion and successful defense of 21-credits of dissertation. Dissertations must consist of original research that advances the state of the art in the research subject area and should result in the publication of at least three papers (2 published by time of defense, another under review) in a peer-reviewed journal. It is expected that the student is the first author, and it is entirely acceptable to have participation of dissertation guidance committee members as co-authors.

Submission of the Ph.D. dissertation following the University’s Guidelines for Dissertations.

Course Requirements

The program includes fifty-four (54) credits of graduate coursework beyond the bachelor’s degree and twenty-one (21) credits of dissertation research. 12 of the 54 course credits are required and 12 are electives. The required courses include three Core courses (9 credits), an Urban Systems Seminar (1 credit), and a Community Service Project (2 credits) which is done in partnership with an entity outside of the university environment. The program’s elective coursework is designed to be flexible in order to support the student’s research interests, educational backgrounds, and career goals, offering an integrated education program that blends urban domains with supporting informatics content. Below are details on dissertation credits and minimum credit requirements.

CE-GY 998X :Dissertation level research, a maxium of 6 credits can be taken before passing the qualifying exam.
CE-GY 999X : Dissertation level research.A minimum of 15 credits of CE-GY 999X must be taken after passing the qualifying examination.
Registration for CE-GY 998X is optional before registering for CE-GY 999X.
Registration for a minimum of 3 credits dissertation (post qualifying exam) must be continuous (excluding summer semesters), unless a formal leave of absence is requested and approved.
Registration for 3 to 12 credits of dissertation per semester is permitted. In the final semester of research.
Ph.D. candidates who have completed the 75-credit requirement, including all dissertation credits, will be permitted to maintain their student status by registering for Maintenance of Studies (MOS) every fall and spring (and summer) until they defend.

Required Courses (12 Credits)

These courses are required for all students in the program.

CE-GY 6053 Monitoring Cities 3 Credits
Or CUSP-GX 6005
CE-GY 7843 Urban Infrastructure Systems Management 3 Credits
CUSP-GX 5002 Principles of Urban Informatics 3 Credits
Seminar and Project
CE-GY 6010 Guided Studies in Civil Engineering Various Credits
Urban Systems Seminar - 1 Credit

Community Impact Project - 2 Credits

Electives

Ph.D. level coursework is designed to be flexible in order to support the student’s research interests, educational backgrounds, and career goals, offering an integrated education program that blends urban domains with supporting informatics content.

Urban Systems

CE-GY 7713 Selected Topics in Environmental and Water Resources Eng 3 Credits
Climate and Energy (or TECH-GB 2384)
CE-GY 8383 Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Its Applications in AEC/FM 3 Credits
CE-GY 7993 Selected Topics in Infrastructure Systems 3 Credits
Disaster and Risk Analysis (or CUSP-GX 8006 )
TR-GY 6113 Forecasting Urban Travel Demand 3 Credits
TR-GY 7353 Data-driven Mobility Modeling and Simulation 3 Credits
Urban Sytems Courses from other NYU Schools

ENYC-GE 2070 Urban Ecology 3 Credits

FOOD-GE 2036 Water, Waste and The Urban Environment 3 Credits

Statistics and Data Science

CS-GY 6613 Artificial Intelligence I 3 Credits
CS-GY 6763 Algorithmic Machine Learning and Data Science 3 Credits
ECE-GY 6233 System Optimization Method 3 Credits
MG-GY 6193 Statistics for Data Analysts 3 Credits
ROB-GY 6203 Robot Perception 3 Credits
Statistics and Data Science Courses form Other NYU Schools

APSTA-GE 2351 Practicum in Applied Statistics: Applied Probability (Workshop) 1 Credit

DS-GA 1001 Introduction to Data Sciences 3 Credits

DS-GA 1002 Probability and Statistics for Data Science 3 Credits

DS-GA 1007 Programming for Data Science 3 Credits

STAT-GB 2301 Regression and Multivariate Data Analysis 3 Credits

Urban Informatics

CS-GY 6323 Large-Scale Visual Analytics 3 Credits
CUSP-GX 2505 Big Data Analytics for Public Policy 3 Credits
Or PADM-GP 2505 Advanced Data Analytics and Evidence Building
CUSP-GX 5003 Machine Learning for Cities 3 Credits
CUSP-GX 6001 Applied Data Science 3 Credits
CUSP-GX 6002 Big Data Management & Analysis 3 Credits
CUSP-GX 7002 Urban Spatial Analytics 3 Credits
CUSP-GX 7004 Urban Decision Models 3 Credits
Urban Informatics courses from other NYU schools

URPL-GP 2618 Geographic Information Systems and Analysis 3 Credits

URPL-GP 4650 Advanced GIS: Interactive Web Mapping and Spatial Data Visualization 1.5 Credits

Finance, Governance, and Society

These course are offered from other NYU schools outside of Tandon.

ELEC-GG 2840 Citizenship Culture: Art, Urban Governance 2 Credits

FINC-GB 3186 Project Finance and Infrastructure Investment 1.5 Credits

PADM-GP 4443 Financing Urban Government 1.5 Credits

PHD-GP 5902 Research Methods 4 Credits

URPL-GP 2612 Adapting the Physical City 3 Credits

URPL-GP 2625 Environmental Infrastructure for Sustainable Cities 3 Credits

URPL-GP 2645 Planning for Emergencies and Disasters 3 Credits

URPL-GP 2660 History and Theory of Planning 3 Credits

Dissertation

Dissertation Advisor and Committee

Students declare a dissertation/research advisor during the month of September of academic year two, shortly after passing the Ph.D. qualifying exam in May of the first year. The student and the advisor will subsequently select a dissertation guidance committee by January of the second year (start of 3^rd semester). This committee will be composed of the research advisor and three other faculty members including one external advisor (from another institution or from an NYU school other than the primary advisor). The function of the dissertation guidance committee is to monitor and support the student’s progress throughout the program starting from the dissertation proposal. Declaration of the primary advisor and the dissertation committee is done by submitting their names to the Urban Systems Ph.D. Program Director by the above-mentioned times, notifying all parties involved.

Dissertation Proposal Examination

The Research Proposal examination, overseen by the dissertation guidance committee and based on a dissertation proposal and research plan, must be passed by end of month of February of the second year. The objective of this exam is to ensure the student has chosen an appropriate Ph.D. research topic and that the research plan is rigorous and has high likelihood of success. The results of each student’s proposal examination must be submitted by the primary advisor to the program director no later than one week following the exam, along with the proposed scope of work, the student and the dissertation committee copied. A memo on passing of this exam and the committee composition will be delivered by the program director to the Registrar of NYU Tandon in writing, no later than one week following the receipt of results. Failing of the exam will lead in intervention by the program director and may result in placing the student in probation.

Progress Assessment

Subsequent to passing the proposal examination, and at end of each term, the student submits a progress report to the program director, outlining progress of the proposed plan including the specifics for that term. These reports are reviewed by the dissertation guidance committee prior to submission, will ensure tracking of the student progress at end of each term, where comments by members of the committee are included.

Dissertation Defense

With the dissertation research advisor and the dissertation guidance committee’s approval, the student will submit a written dissertation, in compliance with all requirements of NYU Tandon. The dissertation must be provided to the dissertation guidance committee members at least two weeks