Study plan

The Doctoral state examination is the same in all specializations of the study programme. It consists of the defense of the thesis proposal and an oral exam in two sub-areas, which the student and the supervisor choose in advance from the list offered. The selected sub-areas of the oral exam should respect the topic of the study and be thematically different. Each examination area has its guarantor, who can formulate new sub-areas based on student’s needs. The content of the doctoral state examination has to be approved by the Doctoral board separately for each candidate, taking also into account the direction and topic of their study.
The thesis proposal for the doctoral state examination is submitted by the student in writing in advance. The proposal must contain a detailed overview of student’s research area and the proposed research plan. This proposal is first reviewed by independent experts which can also be from abroad. The subsequent examination and the defense of the thesis proposal is held before an approved examining board on fixed dates of the term. Students are expected to submit the thesis proposal and pass the examination after their second year of study.

To be admitted to the defence of their doctoral dissertation thesis, students must fulfill all requirements of the study and, in particular, publish (or get accepted for publication) at least two refereed scientific publications of high international quality. See more detailed conditions in the "Goals of Theses" section.

The specialization of Computing Technology and Methodology focuses mainly on applied (targeted) research and development of innovative computing tools and techniques. This means experimental or theoretical work, whose integral part is the acquisition of new knowledge related to concrete and mostly predetermined usage goals, which may be formulated in collaboration with researchers from other scientific disciplines or with the industrial partners of the Faculty of Informatics. Typical outputs of targeted research in computer science are fully functional software works or original methodological approaches to system design, based on original and published ideas and principles. The evaluation of the study progress emphasizes the practical applicability, the originality and the new scientific contribution of the achieved solutions, besides the number of the follow-up publications.

In agreement with the MU Strategic Plan (till 2020), we pay the utmost attention to the individualization of doctoral studies at FI. Every doctoral student, together with the supervisor, must prepare and follow their individual study plan, which is approved by the Doctoral board.
The common required student study and research activities are summarized in the following overview:
* General subjects - these include research methodology, professional English, soft skills and pedagogical training. These activities are represented by the existing courses DUVOD, DACSE, DSOKL, DUCIT and account for about 5% of the study load (10-20 credits).
* Foreign internship - for a minimum of 1 month for the duration of studies, suggested for 3 months in total. This represents 5% of the study load (corresponds to 10-30 credits).
* Individual research - the main activity that takes place during the whole period of study, including the preparation of the proposal, the dissertation thesis, specialized study, publication and presentation activities, and laboratory seminars. This part accounts for the remaining 90% of the study load (in the standard length of study this corresponds to the current 210-220 credits). To make this part more concrete, we describe next some of the activities included in the 90% load in more details:
* Specialized subjects - with respect to the individual focus of doctoral study, these are seminar-like subjects. They include FI Informatics Colloquium (currently DINKOL), MU Seminar Series, and active attendance at a designated laboratory seminar (depending on the laboratory involved, these are the current subjects DFOME, DMPOS, DPITS, DEMBSY, DMKZI, DMZDD, DPOSO, DPGZO, DZPJUI).
* Preparation of thesis proposal - by the end of the 2nd year of study (recommended by the end of the 3rd semester). This activity is also supported by the existing compulsory subject DTEDI.
* Refereed scientific publication - by the end of the 3rd year of study. At least two publications are requeired for the defense of the dissertation thesis.

Application-Aware Flow Monitoring
Normalization of Unstructured Log Data into Streams of Structured Event Objects
Towards Prediction and Recommendation in Higher Education
Source Retrieval for Text Reuse Detection
Designing Image Compression Algorithms for Massively Parallel Processors
Bioinformatics tools for the analysis of macromolecular structures

The defended theses are listed together on the page https://www.fi.muni.cz/studies/doctoral/alumni.html, see those of "Field: Computer systems and technologies".