Overview

• AS&T offers students the option of crossing disciplinary lines in developing graduate degree programs. Students may select courses from a wide variety of departments and graduate programs as they prepare for Preliminary Exams and Qualifying Exams that reflect the breadth of their chosen research programs.
• A doctoral dissertation in AS&T typically allows students and faculty to focus on subjects that straddle two or more disciplines. For example, plasma theory and experiment, as applied to plasma-assisted materials-processing techniques, to fusion energy research or to space physics, could be attractive to, and much more tractable for, students situated within an interdisciplinary group rather than within a single department. The Graduate Group in AS&T offers such a home. 
• AS&T seeks to foster closer collaboration among faculty and students from different departments, particularly through joint classes, joint seminars, and joint supervision of graduate students. There are approximately 80 faculty members from various research disciplines associated with AS&T (see list of faculty), so the possibilities are many.