Advice on pursuing a CS PhD in New York City

[NYC-hacker]

Hi All,

I'm looking to join a PhD program. I live in New York City and have a focused area of research I would like to pursue and would like to get some advice on schools or professors that might be a good fit. I do not want to move from the city, and have a fairly unique background.

I did a BS/MS in Computer Science about 10 years ago from Stanford, had an ok GPA (~3.6) on a fairly tenacious course load. I did a lot of work in Computer Graphics during my undergrad (primarily around rendering), during my masters I focused on AI & Computer Vision. I also taught for 2 years during my masters. I am also an artist and have practiced fine art most of my life.

Following school I went into startups and ended up starting a technology company that was acquired. At this point in my career I'd like to focus on ideas that I've been having for most of my life. I own a home in New York City and would like to stay there. Specifically I'd like to work on tools to characterize knowledge within AI systems. If you think of human beings, we have a physiology that interprets data from the world. Art, language, music are examples of characterizations of the relationship between this physiology and the signals it receives from the environment -- with consciousness as a mediating force. The goal would be to precisely characterize these aspects formally from the ground up, via first principles, through intuitions I have developed via my art practice. There is some recent work that is starting to think along these lines:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2019.0513

If you have any pointers on the process or tips that would be much appreciated. I'm currently looking at Columbia, NYU, CCNY, Baruch and Fordham, not sure if there are others.

Thanks!

 

Edited August 31, 2019 by NYC-hacker

[pyar23]

I'm in the CS PhD program at CUNY. I would definitely look into the program at the Graduate Center. CCNY and Baruch don't have separate PhD programs, they are all housed at the Graduate Center. But you can work with pretty much any faculty across CUNY. I recommend that you check out the website and look under research areas to find faculty working in your area of interest. https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/Computer-Science We've admitted non-traditional students into our program over the last few years, so I would definitely say you have a shot, especially if you're able to connect with a professor that you want to work with.

Let me know if you have any questions about the program!

[Luptior]

Columbia and NYU are the most suitable for the direction you want to go. Also, NYU has two different PhD programs, one in Courant and the other is more engineering oriented hosted by Tandon School of Engineering. 

In addition to the list you mentioned, Stevens Institute of Tech could also be a choice.