The Field of Computer Science is intended for students who are primarily interested in the general aspects of computational processes, both theoretical and practical. Areas of research in the field include algorithms, architecture, artificial intelligence, computer vision, computational biology, concurrency and distributed computing, database systems, machine learning, machine vision, natural language processing, networks, numerical analysis, programming environments, programming languages and methodology, robotics, and theory of computation. The Cornell Ph.D. program in computer science is consistently ranked among the top six departments in the country, with world-class research covering all of computer science. Our computer science program is distinguished by the excellence of the faculty, by a long tradition of pioneering research, and by the breadth of its Ph.D. program. Faculty and Ph.D. students are located both in Ithaca and in New York City at the Cornell Tech campus. The Field of Computer Science also includes faculty members from other departments (Electrical Engineering, Information Science, Applied Math, Mathematics, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Computational Biology, and Architecture) who can supervise a student's Ph.D. thesis research in computer science.
The programming languages research group at Cornell includes eight faculty and over two dozen Ph.D. students. We are proud of both our breadth and depth in this core discipline. Cornell has been known from the beginning for its research in programming languages. We have made foundational contributions to type theory, automated theorem proving, and language semantics. A more recent theme has been language-based solutions to important problems such as computer security, networking, and distributed programming. Cornell researchers have also contributed to language implementation, program analysis and optimization, domain-specific languages, and software engineering.