PhD Programs

Northeastern’s selective doctoral programs are powered by two essential ingredients for excellence: a world-class faculty and resources. Students also benefit from the university’s robust collaborations with industry, government, and academic institutions worldwide.

• External research funding has risen since 2006 by 168 percent, to $130 million in 2016.
• Through a comprehensive faculty hiring initiative, Northeastern has hired nearly 450 tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the past eight years and will recruit at least 200 more by 2017.
• Early in 2017, the university opened a $225-million, 220,000-square-foot Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex. Here, scholars from across the university collaborate in areas from robotics and drug delivery to tissue engineering.

The university is home to federally funded centers of excellence designated by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, and departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, and Veteran’s Affairs.

Bioengineering

This interdisciplinary program provides students with the skills and knowledge essential to careers in a growing number of fields where biology, engineering, and medicine intersect.

Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology

The focus of this program is interdisciplinary approaches to environmental sustainability in the context of global change. The goal is to train researchers who can apply their research to solving questions in ecology, evolution, and marine biology, as well as to issues relevant to the environment and society.

Information Assurance

This program engages faculties from the colleges of Computer and Information Science, Engineering, and Social Sciences and Humanities. It prepares students from diverse backgrounds and interests to advance the reliability and security of cyberspace as researchers, faculty members, and policy advisors.

Network Science

The program provides tools and concepts for understanding the structure and dynamics of networks across a wide range of domains, including human behavior, socio-technical infrastructures, and biological agents and epidemic diseases.

Personal Health Informatics

This program prepares researchers to design and evaluate technologies that improve health and wellness, and that have the potential to transform healthcare. This joint degree program combines curricula in human-computer interface technology and experimental design in the health sciences.

Population Health

Integrating interdisciplinary education and experiential opportunities, this program prepares students for careers dedicated to improving the health and well-being of populations. It trains students to become public health leaders through the simultaneous examination of multiple health determinants, including social, environmental, nutritional, and behavioral risk factors.