We offer five graduate certificate programs that you can add to your degree to gain expertise and skills within a specific area of the computer and information sciences. These areas include biocomputing, biometrics, computer security, databases and data mining, and software engineering.
These certificates, granted by Purdue, expand your resume and can make you an even more attractive candidate for postgraduation positions.
Federal regulations issued by the Department of Education require that Indiana University make certain information about this certificate program available. Disclosure of this data is a condition of awarding federal financial assistance to eligible students in this non-degree academic program.
Recent developments in science have produced a wealth of experimental data of sequences and three dimensional structures of biological macromolecules.
By completing this certificate, you will understand the structures, functions and evolution of proteins and nucleic acids; know how to retrieve and interpret bioinformation from the internet; learn principles, algorithms, and software for sequence alignment; similarity search of sequence databases; estimation of phylogenetic trees; structural prediction; and functional interference.
With the advances of computer and information science, this data is available to the public from a variety of databases on the internet. Analysis of this data with various computational methods to obtain useful information is an emerging interdisciplinary area of study.
You will learn how to apply computational techniques to understand structures, functions, dynamics, and evolution of living organisms.
The certificate program is ideal for students working towards (or possessing) a B.S. or M.S. degree in computer science, computer engineering, mathematics, statistics, biological engineering, or one of the life sciences.
Whether you are an undergraduate or a graduate student this program allows you to pursue a well-defined program where you gain fundamental skills in computing and biology so that you will be competitive for high-end employment in emerging technical fields.
A graduate certificate will be issued when a student has completed 12 graduate credit hours in one of the specialization areas. After finishing the requirements for the graduate certificate, the student may opt to finish the remaining requirements towards a MS degree.*
Biometrics is the study of how to authenticate people using their biological features, such as fingerprints, irises, retina, face, or voice. Biometrics is a dynamic and challenging career that is projected to be one of the fastest growing jobs in the next decade.
Biometrics may prepare you for advanced careers in research, teaching, and technology development in occupations within academia, the medical industry, or forestry. You will be exposed to the hands-on nature of biometrics programs and the equipment used in the field.
While keys and passwords can be lost, forgotten, replicated, or stolen, biometric authentication requires an inherent part of a physiological being. Iris feature analysis, DNA matching, and voice recognition are examples of the use of human characteristics to replace passwords or make the process of logging in more secure.
Biometrics helps law enforcement professionals to perform virtual 3-D forensic facial reconstruction from 2-D images. In order to prepare graduates for careers in information security and human-computer interfacing, the biometrics program offers courses covering:
As a biometrician, you’ll employ computer hardware and software to help you use the specific character traits of biological entities for identification through many computerized processes.
Increased security issues, terrorist threats, and corporate precautions may provide you with opportunities in private business, government agencies, environmental organizations, or scientific research and development laboratories.
Additionally, a degree in biometrics may qualify you to teach at the primary, secondary, or college level.
A graduate certificate will be issued when a student has completed 12 graduate credit hours in one of the specialization areas. After finishing the requirements for the graduate certificate, the student may opt to finish the remaining requirements towards a M.S. degree.*
Three Specialization Courses:
Students admitted directly to the Computer Science Master of Science graduate program may earn this certificate in conjunction with their M.S. degree provided that all the requirements of the certificate program are satisfied.
The Computer Security Graduate Certificate program will explore concepts and principles of cryptography and network security.
You’ll explore topics like cryptography, secure programming, security protocols, firewalls, intrusion detection, and social engineering. You’ll also continue on with in-depth material on advanced crypto and protocols, honeypots, wireless network security, attacker techniques, and LDAP complemented with hands-on lab exercises.
The program will explore concepts and principles of cryptography and network security, including:
The focus of this certificate is on practical aspects and application of cryptosystems and security protocols in network systems such as the internet.
The goal of this program is for you to acquire an understanding of the concepts and principles of cryptography and network security, and to have a hands-on experience in the practice and application of cryptosystems, security protocols, and current network security standards.
At completion, you will know:
Software developers, system administrators, IT and R and D managers, business professionals with sufficient background, and legal professionals will gain a broad set of technologies unique to the problem of securing computing platforms when completing a graduate certificate in Computer Security.
A graduate certificate will be issued when a student has completed 12 graduate credit hours in one of the specialization areas. After finishing the requirements for the graduate certificate, the student may opt to finish the remaining requirements towards a M.S. degree.*
Three Specialization Courses:
*Students admitted directly to the Computer Science Master of Science graduate program may earn this certificate in conjunction with their M.S. degree provided that all the requirements of the certificate program are satisfied.
The program will introduce students to the core concepts necessary for the design, implementation, and application of database systems.
The Databases and Data Mining Graduate Certificate stresses the fundamental principles in database modeling and design. The aim is to address the continuing need for engineering databases for complex and ever-changing applications requiring security, performance, and reliability.
The program emphasizes fundamentals for:
After completing this certificate program, you will be able to:
Data mining is an analytic process designed to explore data (usually large amounts of data—typically business or market related) in search of consistent patterns and/or systematic relationships between variables, and then to validate the findings by applying the detected patterns to new subsets of data. The ultimate goal of data mining is prediction—and predictive data mining is the most common type of data mining and one that has the most direct business applications.
The process of data mining consists of three stages:
A graduate certificate will be issued when a student has completed 12 graduate credit hours in one of the specialization areas. After finishing the requirements for the graduate certificate, the student may opt to finish the remaining requirements towards a M.S. degree.*
One core course:
Three specialization courses:
Software engineering is the branch of computer science that is focused on the application of systematic, disciplined, and quantifiable approaches to the development, operation, and maintenance of software systems.
Inclusive of computer programming but going well beyond, software engineering is concerned with methodologies, techniques, and tools to manage the entire software life cycle, including development of requirements, specifications, testing, maintenance, and project management.
The advent of software engineering is a natural result of the continuous quest for software quality and reusability and the maturing of the software development industry.
When you complete the Graduate Certificate in Software Engineering, you will be able to demonstrate:
The success of software products and services as well as of enterprises and organizations is increasingly determined by the availability of such adequate software solutions.
Once you complete this certificate, you will be familiar with esthetic issues in software design, ethical practices in the software industry, a current process for developing software, current process for managing software engineering projects, measures of software quality, measures of project progress, and tools that support software engineering projects.
A graduate certificate will be issued when you have completed 12 graduate credit hours in one of the specialization areas. After finishing the requirements for the graduate certificate, you may opt to finish the remaining requirements towards a MS degree.
Three Specialization Courses:
Students admitted directly to the Computer Science Master of Science graduate program may earn this certificate in conjunction with their M.S. degree provided that all the requirements of the certificate program are satisfied.