northwestern university phd programs

Clinical Psychology PhD Program

Founded on a scientist-practitioner model, the overall goal of the Clinical Psychology PhD Program is to graduate academic psychologists who are competent, ethical and productive in the science and practice of clinical psychology. Our program emphasizes the integration of science and clinical practice.

Directors' Message Student Admissions, Outcomes & Other Data Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Social Justice

How to Apply

Learn more about the criteria for applying to the program as well as tuition and financial aid.

Our curriculum is structured to maximize clinical, research and ethical training for students.

Meet Our Team

Meet our current students and their faculty mentors. Each student works closely with a faculty member throughout their tenure at Northwestern. Browse the Faculty Mentor list to learn more about their research projects and see who is currently recruiting new students.

Current Students    Faculty Mentors

JD-PhD Program

Northwestern's joint JD-PhD program  is a collaboration between The Graduate School and Northwestern Law. It's designed for applicants who are interested in academic careers examining research topics that are enriched by having both JD and PhD degrees.

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Questions about the PhD program? Find out more.

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How to Contact Us

To contact the PhD Program in Clinical Psychology, please email us at [email protected] .

Please DO NOT call the number below as it will go to our clinic; it is reserved for patients. Please DO NOT call any other numbers that you may find within the Feinberg School of Medicine. We will only respond to emails that are sent to the following email address: [email protected] . Please DO NOT  contact via phone or email the MD Admissions Office; they are not involved in the admissions process for the PhD program in Clinical Psychology. 

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Academic Rigor, Real-World Relevance

When you study at the undergraduate level, you are introduced to a field and gradually become aware of its unexpected nuances and complexities. At the doctoral level, you acquire an intellectual framework that allows you to embrace and accommodate that complexity as you strive to make sense of the world. As you progress, your novel insights help others make sense of the world as well. When that occurs, you are contributing to knowledge. Doctoral study is rigorous and immersive—but it is rewarding.

In the Kellogg PhD program, you will master an academic discipline—economics, psychology, sociology, operations research, or data science—and apply that mastery to real world problems facing managers and policy makers. This discipline-based approach prepares you to challenge conventional wisdom with new ideas, models, and empirical findings that have enduring impact on businesses, organizations, and communities. After leaving Kellogg, you can look forward to a career leading and inspiring others through teaching and research.

• Kellogg’s distinguished faculty includes trailblazing scholars whose research has redefined the study of management and has set a standard for new ideas and innovation. Currently there are 139 tenure-track, research-based faculty, of whom 68 hold endowed chairs. The faculty’s commitment to scholarly inquiry is evidenced by the school’s many research centers, as well as by sustained scholarly output. Their work is published in peer-reviewed journals , and many Kellogg professors serve in editorial positions at leading research journals.  The Kellogg faculty is deeply committed to PhD education. Within the past five years, over 60 different faculty have served on at least 3 PhD dissertation committees, and a phenomenal 26 faculty have chaired at least 2 committees!
• Kellogg faculty carefully balance their dedication to research with their commitment to teaching and mentoring PhD students, recognizing that both activities contribute to the quality of the education our students receive. The richness of the curriculum within this collegial environment encourages close working relationships between students and faculty across disciplines. We believe that this approach helps magnify our students' insights and perspectives as they are exposed to new ideas, possible thesis topics, and avenues of research. Collaboration does not stop at the walls of academia. As a world-class business school, Kellogg also offers tremendous opportunities to connect to real businesses, government organizations, and NGOs, which can translate into ideas and data for research. And Kellogg will provide you with the resources you need for data acquisition, technical support, research labs, and field study, so that you can turn your research ideas into reality.

Study with the World’s Foremost Thinkers and Educators

Collaborative, supportive research environment, the kellogg difference.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

• PhD in Literature

Doctorate in Literature

Interdisciplinary clusters.

The Department of English's Doctoral program in Literature  offers advanced study and research in literary history, criticism, and theory, with excellent opportunities for interdepartmental and interdisciplinary study. Courses within the department cover major genres, periods, authors, and a broad range of methodological and theoretical approaches.

The graduate curriculum is enhanced by frequent lectures and workshops with Northwestern faculty and visiting scholars from around the world. Student-organized colloquia, conferences, reading groups, and dissertation groups provide opportunities for students to present their research to an audience of peers.

The PhD program provides superb professionalization and training in a variety of settings, including teaching assistantships for undergraduate lecture courses and the opportunity to develop and lead courses in Northwestern's Writing Program and the School of Professional Studies .

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

Program overview.

The graduate program in Northwestern’s Department of Psychology aims to train scholars and researchers who will become the future leaders of scientific psychology. We offer PhD programs in Brain, Behavior, & Cognition(BBC); Clinical; Cognitive; Personality, Development, and Health; and Social Psychology. Requirements differ across programs, but all students take both general breadth courses in Psychology, as well as courses more focused on their specific areas of interest.  All students also get training in statistics. Students engage in a series of research projects, and all assist with undergraduate teaching. The department offers no terminal master's degree; students earn a master's degree while on the path to the PhD.

Each graduate student in the department has a primary research advisor (or, in some cases, multiple advisors). Collaboration with other faculty members both within and outside the student’s major area is very common; students are encouraged to address their research questions using multiple research approaches and from a range of perspectives.

Many of our graduate students seek academic careers.  Our department has had students go on to prestigious faculty positions at such institutions as Stanford, Emory, University of Chicago, Indiana University, University of Texas at Austin, and New York University.

• SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

The PhD in Media, Technology, and Society (MTS) program is an innovative, interdisciplinary, and flexible curriculum focusing on the dynamic media and technology environment and its impact. The program encourages students to pursue their passion by designing individualized programs of study that incorporate relevant classes from across Northwestern University. The program faculty are internationally renowned for their research in areas such as:

• Children’s development
• Digital media use and effects
• Health and well-being
• Human-computer interaction
• Innovation and change
• Media institutions
• Networks and organizing
• Social media

The MTS faculty undertake research in these areas using a wide array of traditional and innovative research methods. In addition, they actively pursue opportunities to make positive economic, cultural, and social impact through their research in businesses, nonprofit, and government agencies.

• Contact and Connect

PROGRAM OF AFRICAN STUDIES

Graduate students, new grad students.

Uchechukwu Oguchi (History)

• Uchechukwu Oguchi is a PhD student in Northwestern’s History Department and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in the Program of African Studies (PAS). She holds a B.A. from Baylor University (2023). Her undergraduate thesis provides an analysis of ethnic distrust and colonial constitution-making in Nigeria from 1945 to 1960. She enjoys running, reading, and making music in her free time.

Umar Yandaki   (History)

• Umar Yandaki is a doctoral student in the Department of History. He earned his Bachelor in History at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto (Nigeria). He is interested in historical memory and the politics of erasures in the history of Hausaland, Northern Nigeria. Yandaki is a winner of the 2023 grants competition for writers, researchers and activists jointly organized by the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) Abuja and the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA-Nigeria). He has published a number of peer-reviewed articles in journals and books on themes ranging from historiography to gender history, medical history, financial history and security studies.

Returning Graduate Students

Semiu Adegbenle  (History)

• Semiu Adegbenle is a first-year student in the Department of History. His research interests are African economic and diasporic history. He holds a MA from the University of Ibadan, where his master’s thesis explored the Togolese and Beninoise diaspora in Ejigbo, southwestern Nigeria.

Andrea Adomako (African American Studies)

• Andrea Adomako’s research interests include Black girlhood studies, Black feminist theory, literary criticism, Black political thought, and childhood studies.

Yemi Ajisebutu (Comparative Literary Studies)

Yemi was a 2014 Fulbright (FLTA) Fellow. She is also a cluster fellow in Critical Theory, African Studies, and Poetry and Poetics Colloquium. Yemi holds a Bachelor of Education in English\Literature with a minor in Social Studies from a Nigerian university and an M.A in English (2017) from New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas, New Mexico. Her thesis was titled “Removing the Sixth Mountain: Friendship and Inclusion in West African Women’s Fiction,” It focused on cultural specificity and Stiwanism as viable alternatives to mainstream feminism in West African societies.  Yemi’s doctoral research employs the Yoruba oral tradition of Oríkì to interrogate the Being of the Nigerian Diaspora in the United States. Her areas of interest include critical theory, postcolonial feminist theory, African Literature, oral traditions, 21st-Century Nigerian diasporan Literature, and orality in pre-colonial narratives, especially in Southwestern Nigeria.

Brandon Alston (Sociology)

• Brandon Alston’s major areas of interest are: masculinities, race and ethnicity, identity formation, African American and Africana studies, and religion.

Xena Amro (Comparative Literary Studies)

• Xena Amro has been admitted to the CLS PhD program with a home department in the Middle East and North African Studies (MENA) program. Her research interests include travelogues, global modernism, translation studies, modern Arabic literature, and twentieth-century European novels.

Sasha Artamonova (Art History)

• Sasha is a doctoral student studying modern and contemporary African-American and African Diaspora art at the Department of Art History at Northwestern University. She is particularly interested in the artistic exchange between African-American & African socialist artists and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. She graduated in 2012 with a Specialist Diploma from the Sociology Department at the Russian State University for the Humanities. In August 2019, Sasha received her MA in North American Studies from the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität in Berlin. Her thesis, The Representation of Black Romance in the Painting Series “Vignettes” by Kerry James Marshall, examined the history of visual representation of Black romance in European and North American visual culture. Specifically, Sasha’s research focused on the way Kerry James Marshall created a new canonical representation of Black heterosexual love in his on-going painting series “Vignettes.” Prior to her current studies, Sasha spent two years working in advertising and at the Educational Department of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Currently, she is a freelance contributor to the research project Art Market Dictionary for the German academic publishing house De Gruyter.

Fullamusu Kadija Bangura (English)

• Fullamusu Bangura’s research interests include queerness and healing practices in the literature of the African Diaspora as well as the intersections of race, gender, class, and African politics. Her 2015 senior thesis investigated feminine water spirits of the African Diaspora. She has served as a City Year AmeriCorps member, working in an English/Language Arts classroom with 6-8th graders in North Lawndale. She is passionate about blogging and writes essays about black mermaids and Beyoncé Knowles, among other topics, at fullamusings.wordpress.com . In addition, she participates in Assata’s Daughters, an intergenerational organization that promotes social action in the African American community.

Tarek Adam Benchouia (Performance Studies)

• Tarek Benchouia's research interests focus on the culture and politics of Mahraganat, a contemporary and emergent genre of music in Egypt.

Eddine Nabil Bouyahi (Political Science)

• Eddine Nabil Bouyahi’s research is about the effects of land reforms on social structure in the countryside in Southern Africa, how these policies transform the relationship between the state and the elites in these areas, and the specific politic demands of the populations living there.

Alison Ann Boyd (Art History)

• Alison Boyd studies the arts of the African diaspora and feminist art history. She is a Mellon Fellow in Northwestern’s gender and sexuality studies cluster. Her dissertation is titled “Modernism for America: Africanism and other Primitivisms at the Barnes Foundation 1919-1951.” She argues that Philadelphia art collector Albert Barnes used primitivism—first in relation to African sculpture and African American music and, later, Native American and Pennsylvania German art—to recontextualize his collection of modern art into displays that were uniquely relevant to his vision of the United States.

Rashayla Marie Brown (Performance Studies)

• Rashayla Marie Brown (RMB) is an interdisciplinary artist working across an extensive list of cultural production modes, including photography, performance, writing, drawing, installation, and video art. Her research interests are decolonization of the art historical canon, religious studies, postcolonial theory, queer studies, cultural studies, the intersections of avant-garde performance art and popular culture, and modernism in visual art. As an artist, RMB's work has been commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and Yale University, New Haven, CT; and has shown at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL; Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, IL; INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York, NY; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; Centro Cultural Costaricense Norteamericano, San Jose, Costa Rica; and other venues. She has received the Artadia Award, the City of Chicago's Artist Residency, and the Yale Mellon Research Grant. Her work and words have been featured and published in Art Forum, Blouin Modern Painters, Chicago Magazine, Hyperallergic, and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Her viral essay "Open Letter to My Fellow Young Artists and Scholars on the Margins" was shared over 9K times online as of 2017.

Austin Bryan  (Anthropology)

• Austin Bryan is a Cultural Anthropology PhD student at Northwestern University and a Research Fellow at Sexual Minorities Uganda in Kampala, Uganda. In Kampala he is completing an ethnographic study on the daily lives of kuchus (LGBT) persons.

Issrar Chamekh (Political Science)

• Issrar is interested in the Maghreb with an eye on the Mediterranean region in general. Issrar researches clientelism and how it influences social movements, as well as the dynamics of change and continuity. Issrar also looks at women in politics, politics of memory, and post-colonialism.

Raja Ben Hammed Dorval (French)

• Raja Ben Hammed Dorval received her BA from the University of Tunis and her Master’s from Manouba University in linguistics and language policy. She is interested in pursuing comparative work on Maghrebian and African Francophone literatures regarding questions of the liminal space occupied by immigrant identities and imaginaries. In the context of North African literature, she is also interested in exploring the relations/tensions between the Francophone postcolonial tradition and Arabic literary production in the region.

Sarah Dwider (Art History)

• Sarah Dwider is a doctoral student working on 20th century art from the Middle East with a focus on modern art in Egypt. Her research interests include Cold War-era cultural diplomacy and state cultural policy, social realism in the Arab world, and the role of Middle Eastern artists within transnational and transregional networks of exchange, particularly between Socialist states.

Mitchell Edwards (History)

• Mitch Edwards is a doctoral student focusing on social histories of refugee mobility within twentieth-century East Africa. His research interests revolve around historical displacement in a way that privileges the everyday influence of transnational networks, state-specific governance, and distinct cultures on people living outside their presumed homelands. He is a fellow of the interdisciplinary African Studies Cluster.

Fortunate Kelechi Ekwuruke (Human Development and Social Policy)

• Fortunate Kelechi Ekwuruke is an interdisciplinary researcher pursuing her doctoral studies in Human Development and Social Policy.     Her research examines issues related to adolescent development, housing insecurity, and education in Nigeria. Her current dissertation work features three studies: the role of slum evictions on adolescent development, the educational experiences of adolescents in correctional facilities, and the design and implementation of educational programs for nontraditional students, specifically those who have aged out of the normative education pathway. Fortunate’s work seeks to contribute to literature on African adolescents, centering their experiences and perspectives towards understanding the issues that affect them and driving sustainable solutions.

Claudia Garcia-Rojas (African American Studies)

• Claudia Garcia-Rojas lived in Tunisia before the uprising; she has also lived in France, Germany, and Mexico. Besides her doctoral studies at Northwestern, she is Amnesty International’s “Stop the Violence Against Women” campaign coordinator for the Midwest, a contributing writer at Truthout and Bitch Media, and a commentator on race and gender issues on Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo. See Truthout’s interview with her, “The Surveillance of Blackness: From the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to Contemporary Surveillance Technologies,” http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35086-the-surveillance-of-blackness-from-the-slave-trade-to-the-police .

Nora Gavin-Smyth (Plant Biology and Conservation)

• Regions with extraordinary patterns of biodiversity such as the Eastern Arc Mountains of Kenya and Tanzania are invaluable systems for studying evolution and the processes that accumulate and maintain biodiversity. The geographic distribution of species in light of genetic relationships among populations, the field known as phylogeography, can help us to understand some of these evolutionary processes and provide key information for conservation. My PhD research explores phylogeography at the population level and at the systematic level in the plant genus  Impatiens   (family Balsaminaceae), commonly called “touch-me-nots.”

Esther Ginestet (History)                                           

• Esther Ginestet is a doctoral student in the Department of History. Prior to attending Northwestern University, she undertook her graduate and undergraduate studies at SciencesPo University in Paris as well as the University of Nairobi (as an exchange student). She completed a M.A. in History from SciencesPo and defended a master's thesis about the history of race, ethnicity and nation-building in postcolonial Uganda. Her broader research interests include African history (with a focus on East African history), colonial and postcolonial history, ethnicity, identity-making dynamics, migrations, migration control, nationalism and state-building processes.

Melina Gooray (Art History)

• Melina Gooray is an arts educator and youth advocate who is invested in working in Afrocentric feminist spaces with her own community of womxn and girls of the African Diaspora.  She has over seven years experience working in various capacities at the interface of museum and community for a number of cultural institutions across the country including the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters in Savannah, GA, The Art, Design, and Architecture Museum UCSB, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She is currently a Special Projects Fellow at the Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia where she authors curriculum for youth programs and co-leads the development of a VR museum. In addition, she is a PhD student in Art History at Northwestern, where she researches liberatory pedagogical strategies of contemporary black female artists and art educators. As a researcher, Melina is committed to the vital importance of uncovering and (co)authoring the history of the communities she inhabits. She endeavors to make her scholarship relevant to her communities. In this light, she wrote her master's thesis, "Concrete Under the Guyanese Sun", on shifts in material practices in domestic vernacular architecture in her parents' hometown, Essequibo, Guyana.

Olabanke Goriola (Performance Studies)

• Olabanke Oyinkansola Goriola (She/Her) is an interdisciplinary scholar, performer, researcher, trained dancer, hairstylist, and dance anthropologist from Nigeria. She received her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Theatre Arts from the University of Ibadan in 2016 and a dance certificate from The Dance Deal Training Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria. Olabanke obtained an Erasmus Mundus International Master of Arts (MA) in Choreomundus: Anthropology of Dance from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Norway); University Clermont Auvergne (UCA, France); University of Szeged (SZTE, Hungary) and University of Roehampton (UR, The United Kingdom) in 2020. She also studied at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, under the Kirby Laing Foundation Scholarship, where she received a Master of Science by Research (MScR) in the Study of Religion in 2021. Olabanke’s previous research has explored how the Afro-Brazilian Candomble Orishas’ personality traits are visible through the dances of the Orishas. She investigated the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Afro-Brazilian Candomble religion and how the adherents are devising new methods to keep the religion alive. Drawing from the politics of religion, anthropology, dance and performance, her current research aims to identify and analyze the explicit and implicit sacrifices dark-skinned female performers offer to comply with industry standards and the dynamics of colorism manifesting in these standards. Also, she intends to explore how colorism influences the mental belief of dark-skinned female performers. Olabanke’s areas of research include Dance studies, Ritual studies, African/Diasporic Religion, Music and Dance, Gender and Sexuality studies, Black Feminist theories and performances, Dance Anthropology and Ethnochoreology, Media Studies, Dance Movement Therapy, Media and Film Studies, Cultural studies, and the use of technology such as motion capture to explore dance and movement.

Brandon Greenhouse (Theater)

• Brandon’s research interest is in the relationship of African oral storytelling traditions to contemporary African American theatre.

Rachel Grimm (French and Italian)

• Rachel's research interests include postcolonial North Africa, identity politics in France, gender as a way of signifying relationships of power, and Arabic.

Charina Herrera (African American Studies)

• Charina Herrera research interests focus on Black thought, critical race theory, racial identity, ontology, public memory, pedagogy of slavery, resistance, slavery, maroonage, theories of violence, Black anger and afro-latinx studies.

Bethany Hill   (Art History)

• Bethany is a PhD student studying contemporary art with a particular emphasis on black feminist and queer approaches to visual culture. She is especially interested in scholarship and artists that put pressure on the structures by which we determine subjecthood, agency, and self-representation. She received her BA in the History of Art at Elon University, where she wrote her senior thesis on how the sculpture  Contact , by artist Nandipha Mntambo, performed race and gender during its display at the National Museum of African Art. While at Elon she also received the prestigious Lumen Prize research award which supported two years of investigating the role of gender and performative gesture in medieval German sculpture. Bethany presented this work at the 50th International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo.

Emily Kamm (History)

• Emily Kamm is a first-year doctoral student in the History Department, studying the Atlantic World during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her research interests focus on transatlantic connections between West Central Africa and Latin America, with particular emphasis on environmental history and epistemologies of the natural world. Prior to coming to Northwestern University, Emily lived for ten years in Portland, Oregon. While there she earned a B.A. with Honors in History from Portland State University. Her undergraduate research was supported by the History Department's Lauren Banasky Memorial Grant, typically awarded only to graduate students. Most recently, she served as the program developer for an Oregon Department of Justice grant to integrate domestic violence services into an Oregon Health Sciences University primary care clinic.

Lamin Keita  (Political Science)

• Lamin Keita worked as a journalist for Citizen FM Radio in the Gambia until then President Yahya Jammeh shut it down, along with other independent media outlets, in the early 2000s. After receiving political asylum in the United States, Keita completed his associate’s degree at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and then joined the University of Wisconsin–Madison political science department. His research interests include the history of Islamic institutions and the differential entrenchment of Islamic radical jihadism in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali.

Emma Kennedy  (Art History)

• Emma M. Kennedy researches the intersection of photography and the African diaspora with a focus on the complications and questions that surround “the archive” and the presence/absence of black subjects within it. First introduced to photography through an undergraduate seminar on Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Emma has pursued photography through various academic and professional projects. While working as a curatorial intern at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in 2016, she curated a selection of vernacular photographs  from the 19th and 20th century . Emma has also worked in a variety of different positions at The Phillips Collection, The National Museum of African American History and Culture,  Aperture  magazine, and most recently the art publisher Prestel Publishing. Emma has a B.A. in Art History from Mount Holyoke College.

Emmanuel Elikplim Kuto (Anthropology)

• Emmanuel Elikplim Kuto joins the Department of Anthropology. He is a Ghanaian who trained at the University of Ghana-Legon. He participated in the 7th Ife-Sungbo Campaign in 2022 and worked with Amanda Logan.

Behailu Shiferaw Mihirete (Communication Studies)

Behailu Shiferaw Mihirete joins the Department of Communication Studies. He has 14 years of experience in media and communications in Ethiopia and East Africa. Most recently, Behailu had a work placement at the BBC Media Action, London, during which time he contributed to the feasibility study for the International Fund for Public Interest Media and worked on PRIMED project development. While in the UK, he was also a Chevening Scholar studying politics and communication at the London School of Economics. Before that, Behailu worked in Ethiopia as a Voices from the Field/Communications specialist for WaterAid, focused on producing strategic media content for the organization’s international fundraising and advocacy purposes. He also led communication for nonprofits training in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, and the UK and worked for the Children’s Radio Foundation and UNICEF.

Michell Miller (Performance Studies)

• Michell Nicole Miller holds an A.M. in Theater and Performance Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. She received a B.A. in English Language and Literature with a concentration in Poetry Writing from the University of Virginia. Michell’s research interests include: the black female body, birth justice, traditional birthing practices, black midwifery, Afro-Diasporic ritual and performances of the feminine divine.

Noran Mohamed (French and Italian)

• Noran Mohamed is interested in the connections between French and Arabic. Her academic interests include postcolonialism, Orientalism, exoticism, and neuro/sociolinguistics.

Shelby Mohrs (Anthropology)

• Shelby is an archaeology student whose research uses paleoethnobotanical techniques to study how and what people in the past were eating and their everyday lives. Her current research focuses on the historical foodways of city-states of the Swahili Coast. Other research interests include ethnoarchaeology and political ecology.

Natalia Molebatsi (Performance Studies)

• Natalia Molebatsi is a Pan-African feminist and queer poet, writer and cultural worker from South Africa. Her research interests include feminist media inquiry; Black queer and feminist performance and poetry in theatre as radical (intersectional) feminist intervention. Natalia has performed poetry and presented creative writing workshops in over 15 countries.

Sarah Moore (Political Science)

• Sarah Moore holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico and is interested in comparative politics.

Christopher Muhoozi (Performance Studies)

• Christopher Muhoozi’s project examines ethnicity and race in southwestern Uganda before independence. Before coming to Northwestern he taught for nine years at Uganda's oldest and leading university, Makerere University.

Jesús Muñoz (Comparative Literary Studies)

• Jesús C. Muñoz is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literary Studies affiliated with the Middle East and North African Studies program and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in the MENA cluster. His research interests include decolonial theory, Chicana feminist philosophy and literature, Critical Muslim Studies, feminist epistemology, spirituality, magic, and mysticism.

Moritz Nagel (History)

• Moritz Nagel is a Mellon Cluster Fellow with PAS. His research focus is Duala-German trade and colonial conquest in the Cameroons, emphasizing the political functions of West African institutions such as initiation associations, public debates and assemblies, and talking drums. Besides data mining in archives, he enjoys working with various kinds of sources including orally transmitted histories, objects in museum collections, and early audio recordings. His paper, “Precolonial Segmentation Revisited: Initiation Societies, Talking Drums and the Ngondo Festival in the Cameroons,” won the Graduate Student Paper Prize of the African Studies Association in 2016.

Teddy Nakate (Religious Studies)

• Teddy Nekate’s research focuses on theological reflection on human suffering and sense making among marginalized HIV women in Uganda.

Ewurama Okai (Sociology)

• Areas of interest: Sociology of Culture, Collective Memory, Race and Ethnicity, Education, Knowledge Production, Postcolonial Theory, Sociology of Law, Qualitative Methods

William Richardson (Sociology)

• William Richardson’s main interests focus on postcolonial and Africana sociology and Eurocentricism within sociology.

Rebecca Rwakabukoza  (History)

• Rebecca Rwakabukoza is studying the history of reproductive health practice in Western Uganda. She is part of the research team of Wulira! a podcast that re-members women’s contribution, experiences, and scholarship in the Uganda story.

Raven Schwam-Curtis (African American Studies)

• Raven's research interests include  Black Feminist Theory, Afro-Asian Solidarities, Coalition Building, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Multiracialism.

Dilpreet Singh (Dil Singh Basanti) (Archaeology/Anthropology)

• Dil Singh is an archaeologist working on the Aksumite kingdom (50-800 AD) of northern Ethiopia. His research examines how local-level mythologies of the "family" reconfigure larger scale social processes, particularly global connections/cosmopolitanism, ontologies of death and body, sustainability/water management, emotion and biology, political organization, and the rise of monsters.

Craig Stevens (Anthropology)

• Craig is interested in transcultural Black identity formation in the Back-to-Africa movement, African and African Diasporic solidarity via expressive and material cultures.

Rory Sykes (Art History)

• Rory Sykes’s main interest is Palestinian visual culture during the second half of the 20th Century; however, she is also interested in contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa and the relationship between lens-based media and documentary claims under conditions of catastrophe.

Angela Tate (History)

• Angela Tate studies transnational American history, specializing in African American & African Diaspora and cultural studies. Her research focuses on Black women's activism in art and performance across the US, Caribbean, Africa, and Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is also co-coordinator for the Public Humanities Colloquium, and serves in various leadership roles across the university.

Marquis Taylor (History)

• Marquis Taylor specializes in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century African American history. His work has received funding from the Chabraja Center for Historical Research, the Mellon Foundation, and Social Science Research Center, and The Graduate School at Northwestern.

Elijah Watson (Anthropology)

• Elijah's research broadly focuses on maternal and child health, with a particular interest in maternal stress, child growth and development, infant feeding, and food and water insecurity.

Maximilian Weylandt  (Political Science)

• Max Weylandt's research interests include democratization, public opinion, and political parties. He published a paper in  Electoral Studies  in 2015 titled "The 2014 National Assembly and presidential elections in Namibia."

Aaron Wilford (History)

• Aaron Wilford specialized in environmental history.

Sreddy Yen (English)

• Field: 20th/21st-century Anglophone literature Areas of Interest: contemporary African and Caribbean literatures, global modernisms, queer studies

Recent PhDs

Chernoh Bah, “Resolving an Empire Problem: Public Health, Convict Labor, and the Revenue Crisis in Colonial Sierra Leone, 1914 -1944,” History. Advisors: Sean Hanretta and Helen Tilley. Colin Bos, “Conservators of the World: Sacred Objects, Archaeology, and the State in Southwestern Nigeria,” History. Advisor: Helen Tilley. Bright Gyamfi, “Dreaming of Pan-African Unity: Nkrumahist Scholars and the Global Development of African Diaspora Studies,” History. Advisor: Sean Hanretta. Dela Kuma, "Legitimate" Trade: Local Taste Practices & Consumer Power in Southeastern Ghana, Amedeka (19th to early 20th C A.D), Anthropology. Advisor: Amanda Logan. Salih Noor, “The Legacies of Liberation: Anti-Colonial Struggles, Critical Junctures, and Political Development in Southern Africa,” Political Science. Advisor: Will Reno. Moussa Seck, “The Making of the Stranger in the Francophone Migration Novel,” French and Francophone Studies. Advisor: Nasrin Qader. Gorgui Ibrahima Tall. “The Mechanisms of Cultural Production in the Postcolony: Plurality, Relationality, and (Auto)-Translation in the Senegalese Novel.” French and Francophone Studies. Advisor: Nasrin Qader.   Grace Deveney - “News, Weather, and Sports: Televisual Tactics and Black Art, 1970–1995,” PhD, 2022. Art history. Advisor: Krista A. Thompson. Andrea Daniel Rosengarten - “Remapping Namaqualand: Negotiating Ethnicity and Territoriality in a Southern African Borderland,” PhD, History, 2022. Advisor: Jonathan Glassman. Antwan Byrd - "Interferences: Sound, Technology, and the Politics of Listening in Afro-Atlantic Art. PhD, Art history, 2022. Advisor: Krista A. Thompson. Christa Kuntzelman - "Refugees’ Understanding of  Rights and Governance Structures: A Study of Urban Refugees in Uganda,” Political Science, 2022. Advisor: Wnndy Pearlman. Caitlin Cooke Monroe - “Making History: Women’s Knowledge and the Creation of a Historical Discipline in Western Uganda,” PhD, History, 2022. Advisor: Jonathan Glassman. Vanessa Watters Opalo - “Credit Worthy: Pentecostal Finance in West Africa,” PhD, Anthropology, 2022. Advisor: Robert Launay.  Patrick Mbullo Owuor - “Dams and Displacement: Biosocial Impacts of the Thwako Multipurpose Dam Construction among Women in Makueni County, Kenya,” PhD, Anthropology, 2022. Advisor: Sera Young. Perrin, Ayodeji Kamau - “LGBTQ Human RightsMmobilizations in Domestic and International Courts: A Transnational Perspective on the Judicialized Decriminalization of Homosexual Sex .PhD, Sociology, 2022. Advisor: Karen Alter. Ashley Ngozi Agbasoga - "We Dance with Existence: Black-Indigenous Placemaking in the Land Known as México and Beyond." Anthropology. 2022. Advisor: Adia Benton. David Peyton -"Property Security in the Midst of Insecurity: Wealth, Defense, Violence, and Institutinal Statsis in the Democratic Republish of Congo,” Political Science, 2021. Advisor: Will Reno. Khoury, Rana 2021 -  “Aid and Activism across the Syrian Warscapte,” Political Science, 2021. Advisor: Will Reno. Mlondolozi Bradley Zondi - “Unmournable Void: Tending-Toward the Black Dead and Dying in Contemporary Black Performance and Visual Art,” PhD, Performance Studies, 2020. Advisor: Huey G. Copeland. Boutros, Magda - “The True Color of Police Violence: How Activists Expose Racialized Policing in Colorblind France.” Sociology, 2020. Advisor: John Hagan. Mohwanah Fetus - “Geographies of Memory and Pleasure in African American and Caribbean Literatures,” English, 2020. Advisor: Alexander Weheliye" Maxwell Akanbi (Health Sciences) 2020 - "Impact of Antiretroviral Theraphy Eligibility Expansion on the Epidemiology of HIV-associated Kaposi Sarcoma in Nigeria"  Andrew Wooyoung Kim (Anthropology) 2020 - "Biological memories of apartheid: Intergenerational effects of apartheid-based trauma on birth outcomes, stress physiology, and mental health in Soweto, South Africa," advisor: Chris Kuzawa. William FitzSimons (History) 2020 - "Distributed Power: Climate Change, Elderhood, and Republicanism in the Grasslands of East Africa, c. 500 BCE to 1800 CE" Rachel Mihuta Grimm (French and Francophone Studies) 2020 - "The Afterlives of Amnesia: Remembering the Algerian War of Independence in Contemporary France and Algeria, 1999–2019" F. Delali Yawa Kumavie (English) 2020 - "Dreams of Flight: Literary Mapping of Black Geographies through the Air, Airplane, and Airport" Marcos Leitao de Almeida (History) 2020 - "Speaking of Slavery: Slaving Strategies and Moral Imaginations in the Lower Congo (Early Times to the Late 19th Century)" Corrine E Collins - “ Violent Iintimacies and Queer Desires: Hegemonic Multiracialism and the Post-racial Future, PhD, . English; 2019. Advisor: Alexander G. Weheliye. Scott Newman   (English) | “Sound Figures in Postcolonial African Literature, 1970s to Present” | Advisors: Evan Mwangi (chair), Doris Garraway, and Nasrin Qader. Sasha (Alexandra) Klyachkina -  “Reconfiguration of Sub-national Governance: Responses to Violence and State Collapse in the North Caucasus.” PhD, Political Science, 2019. Advisor: Will Reno. Kritis hRajbhandari -  “Anarchival Drift and the Limits of Community in Indian Ocean Fiction,” PhD, English, 2019. Advisor: Evan Mwangi. Jessica Biddlestone (History) 2019 - "France in Roman Africa: Antiquity and the Making of French Algeria and Tunisia" Will Caldwell (Religious Studies) 2019 - "The Fugitive Islamicate: African Muslims and Black Radicalism across the Atlantic (1492-1925)" Corrine Collins (English) 2019 - "Violent Intimacies and Queer Desires: Hegemonic Multiracialism and the Post-Racial Future" Buddhika Jayamaha (Political Science) 2019 - "Combatants Inside and Out" Sasha (Alexandra) Klyachkina (Political Science) 219 - "Reconfiguration of Sub-National Governance: Responses to Violence and State Collapse in the North Caucasus" Sean Lee (Political Science) 2019 - "Minorities in Times of Conflict: Civil War in Lebanon and Syria" Arturo Marquez, Jr. (Anthropology) 2019 - "Morality at the Margins: Senegalese 'Parallel Worlds' in Barcelona, Spain" Mbongeri Mtshali (Performance Studies) 2019 - "Infidel(itie)s of Colour: Unruly Black Bodies, Modernity and Performance in Post-Apartheid South Africa" Tyrone S. Palmer (African American Studies) 2019 - "(Anti-)Blackness and the Grammars of Affect" Jessica Pouchet   (Anthropology) 2019 - "Conservation and Conversation: Language and Political Ideology in a Tanzanian Forest" Kritish Rajbhandari (Comparative Literary Studies) 2019 - "Anarchival Drift and the Limits of Community in Indian Ocean Fiction" Susanna Sacks (English) 2019 - "Viral Verses: Poetic Movements and Social Media in Southeastern Africa" Amy Swanson (Theatre and Drama) 2019 - "(Il)legible Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Contemporary Dance in Senegal" Marco Bocchese (Political Science) 2018 - "Justice Cooperatives: Explaining State Attitudes toward the International Criminal Court" Matthew Brauer (French and Italian) 2018 - "Text and Territory in the Maghrebi Novel" Chad Infante (English) 2018 - "Cool Fratricide: Murder and Metaphysics in Black and Indigenous U.S. Literature" Raevin Jimenez   (History) 2018 - "Rites of Reproduction: Tradition, Political Ethics, Gender, and Generation among Nguni-Speakers of Southern Africa, 8th-19th Century CE" Jahara (Franky) Matisek (Political Science) 2018 - "The Development of Strong Militaries in Africa: The Role of History and Institutions" Jessica Neushwander (French and Italian) 2018 - "Rereading Fascism: War, Anti-colonialism, and the Crisis of National Identity in Early 20th Century Far-Right French Literature and Thought" Kimberly Seibel (Anthropology) 2018 -"Unsettling Age: Constructions of Later Life and Support in US Resettlement Bureaucracy" Leila Tayeb (Performance Studies) 2018 - "Some Upheavals: Music in Libya, 2011-17" Rachel Taylor (History) 2018 - "Crafting Cosmopolitanism: Nyamwezi Male Labor, Acquisition, and Honor, c.1750-1914" Priscilla Adipa (Sociology) 2017 - "Engaging Spaces, Engaged Audiences: The Socio-Spatial Context of Cultural Experiences in Art Galleries and Art Museums" Abdeta Beyene (Political Science) 2017 - "Sovereignty Preservation Attenuating it Elsewhere: The Political and Security Dimensions of Buffer Zones" Emma Chubb (Art History) 2017 - "Migration Forms: Contemporary Art in and out of Morocco, 1999-2012" Sakhile Matlhare (Sociology) 2017 - "'Africanness' as a Professional Trading Chip: Contemporary African Artists as Producers and Secondary Arbiters in the Gatekeeping Process" Rachel Sweet (Political Science) 2017 - "State-Rebel Relations during Civil War: Institutional Change behind Frontlines" Marlous van Waijenburg (History) 2017 - "Financing the Colonial African State: Forced Labor and Fiscal Capacity"

Student Profiles

Ria Almohtadi

Undergrad: Florida International University, Biological Sciences

Adviser: Rotating

Wallace Bezerra

Undergrad: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Biomedical Sciences

Undergrad: Howard University, Biology

Graduate: University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

Fiona Carter-Tod

Undergrad: University of Richmond, Biology, Leadership Studies

Tzu-yi Chia

Undergrad: National Chung Hsing University, Biotechnology

Graduate: Northwestern University, Biotechnology

Elijah Conway

Undergrad: Auburn University, Biochemistry

Joseph Duffy

Undergrad: Northern Michigan University, Biology

Graduate: Northern Michigan University, Integrated Biosciences

Beatriz Furtado Bruza

Undergrad: University of Michigan-Dearborn, Biology

Samantha Ganser

Undergrad: Lafayette College, Biochemistry

Karen Gomez

Undergrad: Lake Forest College, Biology, Psychology

Carolynn Gonzalez

Undergrad: St. Louis University MO, Biology

Kara Greenfield

Undergrad: Winona State University, Biology

Lauren Haky

Undergrad: Willamette University, Biology

Graduate: Dominican University of California, Biological Sciences

Isha Hawkins

Undergrad: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Biochemistry

Brieanna Jarrell

Undergrad: College of Wooster, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Jessica Johnstone

Undergrad: Cornell University, Biological Sciences

Ali Khoddam Mohammadi

Undergrad: Amherst College, Biochemistry and Biophysics

Logan Langerude

Undergrad: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, Biology and German

Adviser: Atkinson

Undergrad: University of California-Irvine, Biological Sciences

Graduate: Yale University, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases

Amanda Luvisotto

Undergrad: Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Biomedical Sciences

Undergrad: University of California-Davis, Cell Biology

Allegra Minor

Undergrad: Stanford University, Biomedical Computation

Alexandra Moxley

Undergrad: Indiana University-Bloomington, Biology, French

Graduate: Northwestern University, Law

Claudia Nieves Rivera

Undergrad: Purdue University-Main Campus, Medical Laboratory Sciences

Graduate: Purdue University Global, Public Health

Adun Obisesan

Undergrad: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chemical-Biological Engineering, Computer Science and Molecular Biology

Olga Sula Perloff

Undergrad: Sarah Lawrence College, International Development, Music Performance

Graduate: University of Toronto, History and Political Science of Eastern Europe

Natalie Piehl

Undergrad: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Applied Mathematics, Biology

Abhi Ramakrishnan

Undergrad: Cornell University, Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Eliana Roodman

Undergrad: Case Western Reserve University, Biochemistry

Karolina Senkow

Undergrad: Loyola University of Chicago, Bioinformatics, Biology

Jennifer Sheridan

Undergrad: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Biomedical Sciences, Medical Laboratory Science

Magdalena Sotelo

Undergrad: Colorado College, Molecular Biology

Adam Steffeck

Undergrad: Depaul University, Environmental Science

Joshua Yaht Luhng Strauss

Undergrad: University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Microbiology

Emmanuel Ugwor

Undergrad: University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Biochemistry

Graduate: University of Agriculture Abeokuta, Biochemistry

Andres Villalobos

Undergrad: University of Georgia, Biological Engineering

Maya Walker

Undergrad: Iowa State University, Biology

Undergrad: University of Chicago, Biological Sciences

Clare Bossert

Undergrad: Coe College, Biology, Molecular Biology, Neuroscience

Adviser: Guemez-Gamboa

Andra Campbell

Undergrad: University Of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Biochemistry

Adviser: Rocklin

Kaleigh Copenhaver

Undergrad: The University Of Texas At Austin, Biochemistry

Adviser: Caraveo Piso

Evan Couser

Undergrad: Indiana University-Bloomington, Biology, Spanish

Adviser: Eichner

Undergrad: Franklin & Marshall College, Chemistry

Adviser: Heimberger

Ala Elmashae

Undergrad: Cleveland State University, Health Sciences

Adviser: Abdulkadir

Manuel Fierro Cota

Undergrad: California State University-Northridge, Biology

Adviser: Balyasnikova

Mario Garcia

Undergrad: The University Of Texas At El Paso, Biochemistry

Sanaz Ghotbaldini

Undergrad: University Of California-Berkeley, Molecular and Cell Biology

Adviser: Meeks

Undergrad: University of Florida, Biochemistry

Yichen Gong

Undergrad: Fudan University, Life Sciences

Adviser: Weinberg

Ariel Halle

Undergrad: University Of Chicago, Biological Sciences

Adviser: Hultquist

Brandon Li Hancock

Undergrad: University Of Massachusetts-Amherst, Biochemistry

Adviser: Choi

Undergrad: Shanghai Jiaotong University, Biomedical Science

Adviser: Shilatifard

Anna Heinrich

Undergrad: University Of Connecticut, Physiology and Neurobiology

Graduate: University Of Connecticut, Physiology and Neurobiology

Adviser: Duncan

Heather Hirsch

Undergrad: Oregon State University, Microbiology

Adviser: Prindle

Rebecca Jones

Undergrad: Northeastern University, Behavioral Neuroscience

Graduate: Northeastern University, Biotechnology

Adviser: Thorp

Undergrad: University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Bioengineering

Talha Numan Lone

Undergrad: Duquesne University, Biomedical Engineering, Applied Mathematics

Adviser: rotating

Mary Lotesto

Undergrad: Elmhurst University, Biology

Adviser: Ridge / Coates

Karen F. Lou

Undergrad: Peking University, Biological Science

Graduate: New York University, Biology

Adviser: Ridge

Undergrad: University Of California-San Diego, Bioinformatic

Natalia Matiuto

Undergrad: Gubkin University, Chemical Engineering,

Adviser: Kelley

Tiffany Mays

Undergrad: University Of Southern California, Human Biology

Graduate: University Of Southern California, Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine

Adviser: Ahmed

Madeline Elisabeth Melzer

Undergrad: University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Biochemistry

Adviser: Goyal

Grayce Mores

Undergrad: Louisiana State University, Microbiology

Adviser: Hauser

Hassan Moussa

Sharath Narayan

Undergrad: Vanderbilt University, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Adviser: Arango

Timothy Y. Pan

Adviser: Gao

Prathyaya Ramesh

Undergrad: Loyola University Of Chicago, Biology

Adviser: Shukla

Tucker Shriver

Undergrad: Purdue University, Chemistry

Adviser: Ziarek

Anmol Singh

Undergrad: Tulane University Of Louisiana, Biomedical Engineering

Graduate: Columbia University, Biostatistics

Adviser: Perera

Claudia Stroupe

Undergrad: Kalamazoo College, Biology, Reproductive Science and Medicine

Graduate: Northwestern University, Reproductive Science and Medicine

Adviser: Hope

Abhishek Thakkar

Undergrad: National Institute of Technology, Biotechnology

Graduate: Indian Institute of Technology, Biomedical Engineering

Hanxiao Wan

Undergrad: UW-Madison, Biology; Psychology

Adviser: Lee Chang

Anthea Weng

Undergrad: Northwestern University, Neuroscience

Adviser: Gottardi

Johnson Y. Yang

Undergrad: San Francisco State University

Graduate: San Francisco State University, Biomedical Science (Stem Cell Science)

Adviser: Lin

Kristine Yarnoff

Undergrad: Virginia Polytech Institute And State University, Biological Sciences

Graduate: Johns Hopkins University, Biotechnology

Adviser: Barish

Luhan Tracy Zhou

Undergrad: University Of Rochester, Psychology

Adviser: Babayev

Hannah Ball

Undergrad: University of Arizona, Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry

Adviser: Wong, Y

Matt Barraza

Undergrad: University Of California-Berkeley, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Adviser: Contractor

Ashley Bauer

Undergrad: Saint Norbert College, Biology

Adviser: Cui

Undergrad: University Of California-Los Angeles, Neuroscience

Adviser: Carvill

Adrian Carcamo

Undergrad: University of Chicago, Biology

Adviser: Yi, R

Claire Chaikin

Undergrad: Loyola University Of Chicago, Biochemistry

Adviser: Peek

Harun Cingoz

Undergrad: Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi, Biology

Graduate: Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi, Biology

Adviser: Kim, J

Emanuelle Grody

Undergrad: University Of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

Karla Guerra

Undergrad: St Mary's University Texas, Biology

Graduate: University of Liverpool, Advanced Biological Sciences

Adviser: Wu, J

Irena Gushterova

Undergrad: University of Tampa, Biochemistry

Graduate: Columbia University, Biotechnology

Nana Haruna

Undergrad: Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Biological Science

Adviser: Berdnikovs

Prianka Hashim

Undergrad: Muhlenberg College, Neuroscience, Gender & Sexuality

Undergrad: Yonsei University Seoul, Life Science and Biotechnology

Graduate: Yonsei University Seoul, Biotechnology

Adviser: Min

Undergrad: University Of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Biology-Biomedical Science

Graduate: Illinois Institute Of Technology, Cell and Molecular Biology

Adviser: Gelfand

Austin Klein

Undergrad: University of Arizona, Molecular & Cellular Biology / Applied Mathematics

Graduate: University of Cambridge, Genomic Medicine

Adviser: Mendillo

Szu-Yu Kuan

Undergrad: Pennsylvania State University, Microbiology

Adviser: Yap

GaHyun Michelle Lee

Undergrad: Grinnell College, Biology

Adviser: McNally

Yangyang Li

Undergrad: Changzhi Medical College, Clinical Medicine

Graduate: Shanxi Medical College, Physiology

Undergrad: Bryn Mawr College, Biology

Graduate: Northwestern University, Neurobiology

Adviser: Singer

Undergrad: University of California- San Diego, Biochemistry and Cell Biology

Nick Markov

Undergrad: Moscow State University

Graduate: Newcastle University, Bioinformatics

Adviser: Misharin

Undergrad: Mount Holyoke College, Biological Sciences

Adviser: Prakriya

Hannah McDowell

Undergrad: University of Illinois at Urbana, Molecular Biology and Chemistry

Adviser: Laronda

Nicole McGrath

Undergrad: University of Maine, Biology

Adviser: Bonini

Brian Miller

Undergrad: Northeastern University, Biology and Mathematics

Adviser: Akhtar

Undergrad: University of California- San Diego, Biochemistry/Chemistry

Adviser: Satchell

Undergrad: University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Neuroscience

Graduate: Karolinska Institutet Stockholm, Biomedicine

Claudia Oropeza

Graduate: University of Chicago, Bioinformatics; Elmhurst College, MBA

Adviser: Ozer

Chloe Parker

Adviser: Urbanek

Undergrad: University of Washington, Materials Science and Engineering

Brooke Simonton

Undergrad: Northeastern University, Biochemistry

Adviser: Gate

Undergrad: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Biology

Abbey Tierney

Undergrad: University of Illinois at Urbana, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Adviser: Eisenbarth

Gabriel Torres-Mejias

Undergrad: University of Puerto Rico, Biomedical Science

Adviser: Woloschak

Aliki Valdes

Undergrad: Western Washington University, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Madeleine Vessely

Undergrad: Grinnell College, Biology, Anthropology

Adviser: Bachta

Kameron Walker

Undergrad: Nanjing Agricultural University, Biotechnology

Graduate: Tongji University Shanghai, Biomedical Engineering; North Carolina State University, Statistics

Adviser: Yue, F

Josiah Wong

Undergrad: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Biochemistry

Julia Yescas

Undergrad: New Mexico State University, Biology

Charles Zhang

Undergrad: University of California- San Diego, Bioengineering: Bioinformatics

Undergrad: Northeast Agricultural University Harbin, Agronomy

Graduate: China Agricultural University, Crop Genetics and Breeding

Adviser: Yang, R

Chenlin Zhao

Undergrad: Ocean University of China, Biological Engineering

Rosie Bauer

Undergrad: Lawrence University, Biology

Undergrad: University of Miami, Biomedical Engineering

Graduate: University of Miami, Biomedical Engineering

Daphne Cornish

Undergrad: Washington University, Biology

Ashley Cunningham

Undergrad: The University of Texas at Austin, Human Biology

Adviser: Seed

Annmarie Dominguez

Undergrad: University of California- Santa Cruz, Chemistry

Adviser: Arispe

Undergrad: Washington University, Mathematics

Adviser: Yi

McKenzie Fulcer

Undergrad: Colorado State University, Biomedical Sciences and Microbiology

Alex Glasco

Undergrad: University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Microbiology

Estefany Guzman

Undergrad: Loyola University of Chicago, Biochemistry

Graduate: Johns Hopkins University, Biochemistry, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Undergrad: Olivet Nazarene University, Biology

Adviser: Schwulst

Maureen Haynes

Undergrad: University of Tulsa, Biology, Sociology

Adviser: Muller

Undergrad: University of Toronto, Pharmacology

Graduate: University of Toronto, Molecular Biology

Dalton Huey

Undergrad: Virginia Commonwealth University, Biology & Bioinformatics

Adviser: George

Radhika Iyer

Undergrad: University of California Davis, Microbiology

Adviser: Fang

Arjun Kharel

Undergrad: University of Evansville, Biology

Sophia Lamperis

Adviser: Thaxton

Hannah Mubarak

Undergrad: Jamiat Al-Malik Saud, Biochemistry

Graduate: Boston University, Bioinformatics

Adviser: Liu, H

Jesus Ortega

Undergrad: California State University Fullerton, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology

Adviser: Gottwein

Claire Phoumyvong

Undergrad: University of Pennsylvania, Biology

Graduate: University of Pennsylvania, Biotechnology

Carla Reyes Flores

Undergrad: Univ of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Animal Science

Annika Schroder

Undergrad: Gustavus Adolphus College, Biology, Scandinavian Studies

Undergrad: Sun Yat-Sen University, Forensic Medicine

Graduate: Medical College of Wisconsin, Immunology

Undergrad: University of California Santa Cruz, Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology

Adviser: Mitchell

Undergrad: Northeastern University, Combined Computer Science and Biology

Anneke Thorne

Undergrad: University of Chicago, Biological Chemistry

Adviser: Bass

Pranathi Vadlamani

Undergrad: Indiana University Bloomington, Biotechnology

Graduate: Indiana University Bloomington, Biotechnology

Adviser: Foltz

Alex Willis

Undergrad: University of Illinois at Urbana, Biochemistry

Undergrad: Georgia State University, Biological Science

Graduate: University of Michigan, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology

Adviser: Liu, Y

William Yang

Undergrad: McMaster University, Molecular Biology and Genetics

Graduate: McGill University, Experimental Medicine

Armando Barajas

Undergrad: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Adviser: Cianciotto

Undergrad: Wuhan University, Geophysics

Graduate: Northwestern University, Environmental Engineering

Junlong Chi

Undergrad: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Biomedical Engineering

Graduate: Northwestern University, Biomedical Engineering

Adviser: Y. Wan

William Cisneros

Undergrad: Northeastern University, Bioengineering

Karis DAlessandro

Undergrad: Johns Hopkins University, Neuroscience

Adviser: Chandel

Undergrad: Indian Institute of Science, Biology

Graduate: Indian Institute of Science, Biology

Kate DeMeulenaere

Undergrad: Carleton College, Chemistry

Saya Dennis

Undergrad: Tokyo Daigaku, Forest Environmental and Resource Science

Adviser: Y. Luo

Blake Everett

Undergrad: University of Minnesota, Biochemistry

Grace Foley

Undergrad: North Carolina State University at Raleigh, Genetics

Adviser: J. Kim

Ellen Fruzyna

Undergrad: Marquette University, Biological Sciences

Jamie Guillen Magana

Undergrad: Emory University, Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, Psychology

Adviser: Platanias

Samuel Hamilton

Undergrad: Northwestern University, Biology

Adviser: Winter

Meghan Hutch

Undergrad: Sacred Heart University, Biology

Adviser: Luo, Y

Natalia Khalatyan

Undergrad: University of Illinois at Chicago, Biochemistry

Adviser: Walsh

Megan Larmore

Undergrad: Western Washington Univeristy, Biology- Molecular and Cellular

Adviser: DeCaen

Alexander Lee

Adviser: Foltz/Kelleher

Undergrad: Boston University, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Adviser: Yue

Cydney Martell

Undergrad: Kalamazoo College, Chemistry

Katiannah Moise

Undergrad: Pomona College, Molecular Biology

Adviser: Iruela-Arispe

Dominik Nahotko

Undergrad: Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Biochemistry

Graduate: Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Biochemistry

Tatiana Ortiz Serrano

Undergrad: University of Puerto Rico, Cellular-Molecular Biology

Harun Ozturk

Undergrad: Istanbul Universitesi, Molecular Biology and Genetics

Graduate: Bogazici Universitesi, Molecular Biology and Genetics

Adviser: Adli

Jenny Pokorny

Undergrad: Beloit College, Cellular and Molecular Biology

Adviser: Green, K

Aishwarya Ramamurthy

Undergrad: P.E.S. Institute of Technology, Biotechnology

Graduate: Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, Biological Sciences

Celeste Rosencrance

Undergrad: West Virginia University, Biology

Sarah Sanchez

Undergrad: University of Illinois at Chicago, Biology

Adviser: Penaloza-MacMaster

Aubrey Sawyer

Undergrad: University of Tennessee Knoxville, Microbiology

Adviser: D'Aquila

David Scholten

Undergrad: University of Missouri Columbia, Biochemistry

Adviser: H. Liu

Mohammad Anwar Siddique

Undergrad: University of Dhaka, Microbiology

Graduate: University of Dhaka, Microbiology

Christopher Stephens

Undergrad: Tulane University of Louisiana, Cell and Molecular Biology

Adviser: Naghavi

Cristina Vaca

Undergrad: University of Pennsylvania, Biochemistry

Undergrad: Sun Yat-sen University of Medical Sciences, Biotechnology

Adviser: Winter/Perlman

Lenore Yalom

Undergrad: Ochanomizu Joshi Daigaku, Biology

Adviser: Sumagin

Carlton Adams

Undergrad: Duke University, Biology

Lourdes Brea

Undergrad: University Of Notre Dame, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Adviser: Yu

Ram Chakrabarty

Jennifer Cheng

Undergrad: University Of Illinois, Biochemistry

Alexander Duval

Undergrad: University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Wendy Geslewitz

Undergrad: Denison University, Biology

Adviser: Seifert

Vanessa Hayashi

Nathan Hodge

Undergrad: University Of Michigan, Cellular and Molecular Biology

Adviser: Tetreault

Undergrad: Temple University, Biochemistry

Undergrad: Purdue University, Genetics

Adriana Landeros

Undergrad: University Of California-Santa Cruz, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology

Adviser: Varma

Undergrad: University of Minnesota, Microbiology

Marine Lebrun

Undergrad: Universite de Poitiers, Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular Biology and Genetics

Graduate: Universite de Poitiers, Molecular Biology and Genetics

Undergrad: Vanderbilt University, Molecular and Cell Biology

Joseph OBrien

Undergrad: Old Dominion University, Biology

Jen Ai Quan

Undergrad: Calvin College, Biology

Adviser: Smith

Sara Radecki

Undergrad: Villanova University, Biochemistry

Jocelynda Salvador

Undergrad: University of California Irvine, Biomedical Engineering

Adviser: Iruela Arispe

Anthony Smith

Undergrad: Northeastern Illinois University, Biology

Emily Stroup

Undergrad: University Of Notre Dame, Physics in Medicine

Adviser: Ji, Z.

Undergrad: Northwestern University, Psychology

Adviser: Kalb

Mark Becker

Undergrad: University Of Texas, Biology

Brandi Cobe

Undergrad: University Of Wisconsin-Parkside, Molecular Biology

Garth Fisher

Undergrad: UC-Berkeley, Microbial Biology

Corey Kennelly

Undergrad: University Of Michigan-Flint, Molecular Biology

Undergrad: Johns Hopkins University, Molecular and Cellular biology

Adviser: Wu, Jennifer

Alberto Lopez

Undergrad: University Of California-Irvine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Khyati Meghani

Undergrad: Dr. D.Y. Patil University, Biotechnology

Carly Weddle

Undergrad: Elon University, Biochemistry

Adviser: Burridge

Margarette Clevenger

Undergrad: Kalamazoo College, Biology; Spanish

Eric Martin

Undergrad: University of Florida, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Adviser: Kiskinis

Nathan Waldeck

Undergrad: University Of Illinois, Crop Sciences

Graduate: North Carolina State University, Crop Science

Chuan Zhi Foo

Undergrad: Flinders University of South Australia, Molecular Biology

Adviser: Garcia Anoveros

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Academics   /   Graduate PhD in Computer Science

The doctor of philosophy in computer science program at Northwestern University primarily prepares students to become expert independent researchers. PhD students conduct original transformational research in extant and emerging computer science topics. Students work alongside top researchers to advance the core CS fields from Theory to AI and Systems and Networking . In addition, PhD students have the opportunity to collaborate with CS+X faculty who are jointly appointed between CS and disciplines including business, law, economics, journalism, and medicine.

Joining a Track

Doctor of philosophy in computer science students follow the course requirements, qualifying exam structure, and thesis process specific to one of five tracks :

• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Computer Engineering

Within each track, students explore many areas of interest, including programming languages , security and privacy and human-computer interaction .

Learn more about computer science research areas

Curriculum and Requirements

The focus of the CS PhD program is learning how to do research by doing research, and students are expected to spend at least 50% of their time on research. Students complete ten graduate curriculum requirements (including COMP_SCI 496: Introduction to Graduate Studies in Computer Science ), and additional course selection is tailored based on individual experience, research track, and interests. Students must also successfully complete a qualifying exam to be admitted to candidacy.

CS PhD Manual Apply now

Request More Information

Download a PDF program guide about your program of interest and get in contact with our graduate admissions staff.

Request info about the PhD degree

Opportunities for PhD Students

Cognitive science certificate.

Computer science PhD students may earn a specialization in cognitive science by taking six cognitive science courses. In addition to broadening a student’s area of study and improving their resume, students attend cognitive science events and lectures, they can receive conference travel support, and they are exposed to cross-disciplinary exchanges.

The Crown Family Graduate Internship Program

PhD candidates may elect to participate in the Crown Family Graduate Internship Program. This opportunity allows the doctoral candidate to gain practical experience in industry or in national research laboratories in areas closely related to their research.

Management for Scientists and Engineers Certificate Program

The certificate program — jointly offered by The Graduate School and Kellogg School of Management — provides post-candidacy doctoral students with a basic understanding of strategy, finance, risk and uncertainty, marketing, accounting and leadership. Students are introduced to business concepts and specific frameworks for effective management relevant to both for-profit and nonprofit sectors.

Career Paths

Recent graduates of the computer science PhD program are pursuing careers in industry & research labs, academia, and startups.

• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Northeastern
• University of Pittsburgh
• University of Rochester
• University of Washington
• Naval Research Laboratory
• Northwestern University

Industry & Research Labs

• Adobe Research
• Narrative Science
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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What Students Are Saying

"One great benefit of Northwestern is the collaborative effort of the CS department that enabled me to work on projects involving multiple faculty, each with their own diverse set of expertise.

Northwestern maintains a great balance: you will work on leading research at a top-tier institution, and you won't get lost in the mix."

— Brian Suchy, PhD Candidate, Computer Systems

What Alumni Are Saying

"In the early stage of my PhD program, I took several courses from the Department of Economics and the Kellogg School of Management and, later, I started collaborating with researchers in those areas. The experience taught me how to have an open mind to embrace and work with people with different backgrounds."

— Yiding Feng (PhD '21), postdoctoral researcher, Microsoft Research Lab – New England

Read an alumni profile of Yiding Feng

"My work at IBM Research involves bringing together symbolic and deep learning techniques to solve problems in interpretable, effective ways, which means I must draw upon the research I did at Northwestern quite frequently."

— Maxwell Crouse (PhD '21), AI Research Scientist, IBM Research

Read an alumni profile of Maxwell Crouse

The theory group here is very warm and close-knit. Starting a PhD is daunting, and it is comforting to have a community I can lean on.

— Vaidehi Srinivas, PhD Candidate, CS Theory

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Mentoring Excellence at Northwestern University

Northwestern supports the cultivation of an inclusive community of individuals who are dedicated to excellence in mentoring, who model diverse and inclusive mentoring practices, and who help others become effective mentors and mentees at Northwestern University.

Developing and implementing effective mentoring practices is necessary in order to build a supportive, equitable and inclusive community; to attract, retain and develop talented scholars; and to contribute to an institutional culture that prioritizes well-being and scholarly growth.

• Read more about the four  Foundational Principles of Mentoring Practice : intentional, inclusive, relational and holistic. 
• Find Resources on mentoring, well-being, and diversity, equity and inclusion education . 

Mentoring Relationships and Programs

Faculty mentoring takes place in multiple forms, including one-on-one relationships between individuals and group-based mentoring, and includes the mentoring of faculty colleagues, postdoctoral trainees and students. Many departments and schools offer formal mentoring programs for early career faculty. The Office of the Provost offers small group mentoring for department chairs and early career faculty through the  Provost's Small Group Faculty Mentoring Program .

The Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion offers the IDEA Scholars Mentoring and Leadership Coaching Program , a faculty mentoring and academic leadership development program designed to promote the success of Northwestern's mid-career faculty, geared toward underrepresented faculty.

Faculty Mentoring Training Program

The Office of the Provost, The Graduate School, and the Center for Leadership offer the Northwestern Faculty Mentoring Training Program for faculty. Based on the Provost’s  Foundational Principles of Mentoring Practice  and nationally recognized best practices for the mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral trainees, the training includes small group work, case studies, short lecture-style learning, and guidance to help faculty be intentional and confident in their mentoring abilities.

The NIH and Northwestern strongly suggest that faculty appointed to T32 and other training grants participate in faculty mentoring training. To fulfill these requirements, Northwestern has created a series of evidence-based modules which can be taken over the span of two years. Completion of all four modules within two years constitutes successful completion of the faculty mentoring training. This training is open to all STEM faculty, including those not appointed to training grants.

The Faculty Mentoring Training Program (STEM) will be offered in four modules:

Register online for one or more sessions.

These four sessions will be offered again in 2024-2025, with dates announced beginning in Summer 2024.

Provost’s Office Mentoring Council Members

• Celina Flowers, Co-Chair; Assistant Provost for Faculty
• Adam Goodman, Co-Chair; Director, Center for Leadership and Clinical Professor, McCormick
• Steven Adams, Librarian, Academic Engagement, Northwestern Libraries
• Galen Bodenhausen, Professor, Psychology, Weinberg>
• Michael Deas, Assistant Clinical Professor, Journalism, Medill
• Robert Holmgren, Professor, Molecular Biosciences, Weinberg
• Joan Marie Johnson, Director, Faculty, Office of the Provost
• Angela Lee, Professor, Marketing, Kellogg
• Bonnie Martin-Harris, Associate Dean for Faculty, Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders, School of Communication
• Rick McGee, Professor, Medical Sciences, Feinberg
• Baron Reed, Professor, Philosophy, Weinberg
• Liz Stein, Director of Graduate and Postdoctoral Training and Development, The Graduate School
• Jill Wilson, Professor of Instruction, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, McCormick
• Gayle Woloschak, Associate Dean for Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Affairs, The Graduate School and Professor, Radiation Oncology, Feinberg

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DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

• Prospective Ph.D.s

The department assists students, both financially and practically, to prepare and distribute job market materials to potential employers. We have an excellent record of placing students with leading research universities, liberal arts colleges, government agencies and the private sector.

Listed below is the initial placement for all 274 of our graduates receiving a Ph.D. in the years between 2010 and 2024. The unemployment rate was 0%. For academic positions, appointment is in an Economics Department except where indicated.

Academic placements

• Brown University (postdoc)/University of Nottingham
• Chinese University of Hong Kong (Business School)
• Cornell University
• European University Institute, Italy (postdoc)
• John Hopkins University
• Kobe University
• Princeton University (postdoc)/University of Pennsylvania (Business School)
• Tel Aviv University
• University of Bristol
• University of California-Davis
• University of California Los Angeles (Business School)
• University of Cambridge (postdoc)
• University of Chile
• Yale Cowles Foundation (postdoc)/University of Michigan
• University of Munich
• University of Tokyo
• University of Virginia
• University of Warwick
• University of Zurich (postdoc)
• Vanderbilt University

Government placements

• DIME World Bank

Private industry & consulting placements

• Bates White, Washington, DC
• Compass Lexecon, Chicago
• Compass Lexecon, Washington, DC
• Cornerstone Research, Chicago
• Cornerstone Research, UK
• Early Warning Service LLC
• Marshall Wace
• Upwork, Chicago
• Becker Friedman Institute (postdoc)/University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Duke University (Business School)
• Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, Rome
• Harvard  University (Business School) postdoc
• McGill University
• Michigan State University
• Montreal School of Pharmacy (postdoc)
• Tilburg University
• University of California, Los Angeles
• University of Georgia
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• University of Iowa (Business School)
• Warwick University (Business School), UK
• Yale University (Business School)
• Bank of Italy
• Federal Trade Commission, Washington DC
• Gender Innovation Lab of the World Bank
• Amazon, San Francisco
• Cornerstone Research
• CRI Foundation
• Jane Street Capital
• T-Mobile US Inc., Seattle
• Uber, New York City
• Walmart Inc.
• American University (Business School)
• Brigham Young University
• California Institute of Technology
• Collegio Carlo Alberto
• Florida State University
• Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore
• MIT (Business School)
• National University of Singapore
• Ohio State University (Business School)
• Peking HSBC (Business School)
• Princeton (postdoc)/Columbia University (Business School)
• Stanford (postdoc)/Tilburg University
• Stanford GSB (postdoc)/University of Delaware
• UCLA (Business School)
• University of Alberta
• University of Bonn (postdoc)
• University of Chicago (postdoc)/Stanford GSB
• University of Chicago Crime Lab
• University of St. Gallen
• University of Surrey
• University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Interamerican Development Bank
• Kiel Institute for World Economy

Private industry and consulting placements

• Analysis Group, LA
• Compass Lexecon
• Barclays (London)
• College of Mexico, A.C.
• Harvard University Business School
• London School of Economics (2)
• Oxford University, England
• Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Essex, England
• University of Mannheim, Germany
• University of North Carolina, Wilmington
• Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC
• Amazon, Seattle, WA
• Amazon (Washington, DC)
• Research Improving People's Lives (RIPL)
• Uber, San Francisco
• Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro
• Monsah University, Australia (postdoc)
• National University of Singapore (Business School)
• Oxford University, England (postdoc)
• Peking University, China 
• Rochester University (postdoc)
• Stanford University (postdoc)
• Stockholm University, Sweden
• University of Chicago
• University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• University of Oregon
• University of Texas, Austin
• University of Tokyo (postdoc)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington DC
• International Monetary Fund, Washington DC
• Analysis Group, Chicago
• Bates White, Washington DC
• Capital One, Chicago
• NERA, New York City
• Uber, Chicago
• Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing
• Case Western Reserve University
• Duke University (Business School)
• Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance, Rome 
• New York University, Abu Dhabi
• Rice University (Business School)
• University of Copenhagen
• University of Pennsylvania (Business School)
• University of Toronto (Business School) 
• International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC (2)

Private Industry and consulting placements

• Analysis Group, Boston, MA
• Analysis Group, Dallas, TX
• Charles Rivers Associates, Oakland CA
• Quant Co, Cologne, Germany
• Uber Technologies, San Francisco, CA
• Brown University (postdoc)
• Duke University
• Hitotsubashi University, Japan
• Monash University, Australia
• New York University (Stern School)
• Ohio State University (postdoc)
• Tel Aviv University, Israel
• Toulouse School of Economics
• University of Calgary
• University of California, San Diego
• University of Chicago (Public Policy)
• University of Mannheim, Germany (2) 
• University of Michigan (postdoc)
• Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil (postdoc)
• Waseda University, Japan
• Central Bank of Mexico
• Federal Reserve Bank Board of Governors, Washington DC
• Analysis Group, Boston (2)
• Charles River Associates, Oakland, CA
• Cornerstone Research, Chicago (2)
• Brown University
• Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• International College of Economics and Finance, Moscow, Russia
• Stevens Institute of Technology (Finance)
• University of Florida (2)
• University of Southern California (Law School)
• Cornerstone Research, New York City
• Ernst & Young, Frankfurt, Germany
• SPHERE Institute, Washington DC
• Spring Venture Group (insurance industry) Kansas City, MO
• Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Portugal
• CERGE-EI, Prague, Czech Republic
• Princeton University
• Ryerson University, Canada
• University of Hong Kong
• University of Nevada, Reno
• University of Sydney, Australia
• University of Toronto (Business School)
• Yale University (postdoc)
• Charles River Associates, Washington DC
• Citadel LLC, Chicago
• Compass Lexecon, Boston
• Convertro Inc. (AOL Platforms), New York City
• Cornerstone Research, New York City (2)
• Cornerstone Research, Washington DC
• McKinsey & Company, Chicago
• Park School of Baltimore
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• University of Miami
• University of Nottingham
• University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
• Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto
• Federal Trade Commission, Washington DC (2)
• Inter-American Development Bank, Washington DC
• Bank of America - Merrill Lynch, New York City
• Barclays Capital, New York City
• Emil van Essen Managed Futures, LLC, Chicago
• City University of Hong Kong
• Georgia State University
• Pennsylvania State University
• Singapore Management University
• Texas A&M University
• University of Leicester, United Kingdom
• University of Maryland (Agricultural and Resource Economics)
• Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China
• Yale University
• Analysis Group, Dallas
• Copenhagen Economics, Denmark
• Auburn University
• Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin, Italy
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan School)
• Northwestern University
• Oregon State University
• University of British Columbia (Business School)
• University of Minnesota (Business School)
• University of North Carolina
• Universidad del Pacifico, Peru
• University of Rochester (Business School)
• Yale University (Business School) 
• Compass Lexecon, Washington DC
• Ernst & Young, Chicago
• Arizona State University
• College of William and Mary
• Georgetown University (Foreign Service)
• Gettysburg College
• Ohio State University
• University of Iowa
• University of Wisconsin (Business School)
• University of Queensland, Australia
• University of Toulouse, France
• Bank of England
• Acumen LLC, San Francisco
• GETCO LLC, Chicago
• McKinsey and Company, Chicago
• National Economic Research Associates, New York City
• PIMCO, New York City
•   Arizona State University
• European University Institute, Italy
• IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies, Italy
• Middle Tennessee State University
• University of Haifa, Israel; 
• Bank of Canada
• Bank of Japan
• Carleton College
• Royal Holloway College, United Kingdom
• St Gallen University, Switzerland
• University of Luxembourg, School of Finance, Luxembourg
• University of Michigan, Survey Research Center
• University of Navarra (Business School), Spain
• University of Western Ontario
• Deloitte, Transfer Pricing Practice, Chicago
• Goldman Sachs, New York City

Explore your Higher Education Career Options

Thank you for finding us through WBEZ!

Northwestern University’s Higher Education Administration and Policy program is proud to be a sponsor of WBEZ. Working in higher education can be highly rewarding as you transform lives, organizations, and institutions in the U.S. and around the world.

Whether you are a professional seeking to advance in higher education or want to change your career to higher education, Northwestern will prepare you through our evening master’s degree, credit-bearing certificate, or non-credit certificate offerings—right here in Chicagoland!

Interested in our in-person master’s degree (12 courses) or graduate credit-bearing certificates (4-5 courses)?

Attend an info session interested in our remote, non-credit assessment in higher education certificate (8 remote sessions plus 1-on-1 coaching)  .

Attend an Info Session If you are not sure which info session is right to attend, email Associate Director Mark Hoffman at  [email protected] .

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Medill announces applications open, new Dean’s Scholarship for graduate students

The scholarship will cover full tuition costs for students.

EVANSTON, ILL. – The applications for Fall 2025 for Medill’s Master of Science in Journalism and Integrated Marketing Communications Full-Time programs are now open.

Medill is also announcing the new Dean’s Scholarship, which will provide full tuition for five journalism graduate students and five Integrated Marketing Communications Full-Time students each year, starting with the 2025-26 academic year. Students who apply in Round 1 or Round 2 will have priority consideration for this scholarship. “I am very excited to be able to offer this level of financial support to our journalism and integrated marketing communications graduate students,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker . “The Dean’s Scholarship will allow Medill to continue recruiting the very best students.” Students will be considered through the materials submitted in their admissions application; no additional submissions are required. The Dean’s Scholarship will be awarded to applicants with outstanding merit:

• an excellent academic record
• strong writing/video samples
• relevant work experience
• outstanding student involvement during an undergraduate program

Admitted students will be notified of the Dean’s Scholarship decision after their official admission to the program. Start Your Application

MPPA Curriculum & Practicum - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

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Public Policy & Administration

Curriculum and Specialization Details

MPPA Curriculum

Please see the academic catalog for additional information regarding the curriculum. 

Curriculum Overview 

The Master's in Public Policy and Administration requires the successful completion of 13 courses to obtain a degree. Students complete nine core courses, three elective courses corresponding to a chosen area of specialization, and a capstone class (498) or independent thesis (590).

Please see the academic catalog for additional information regarding the curriculum.  Current students should refer to curriculum requirements  in place at time of entry into the program.

MPPA 401 Research Methods

This course provides students with a basic understanding of research design and qualitative and quantitative research methodologies frequently used in social science and policy research. In addition, this course explores the methods and tools essential to writing graduate-level policy papers within the framework of current topics in public policy and administration. The course content includes research design, research question formation, observation and interview based research methods, survey development and research writing. Students will have the opportunity to apply methods to pursue a policy-relevant research topic of their own design. An overview of publicly available quantitative data will be provided, and comparative policy research will be discussed. Students should expect a rigorous workload in this course. Recommended: take 407 or 403 prior to 401.

MPPA 402 Elements of Public Finance and Budgeting

Public budgeting is one of the most important responsibilities of democratic governance. The budget defines policy, sets priorities, allocates scarce public resources, and distributes the burden of paying for public goods and services. The budget is inescapably both a political document and a management tool. The purpose of this course is to understand the complexities of the budget process and its central role in both democratic institutions and the profession of public administration. Students will be introduced to the public budgetary process and to key budget theories, practices, and methodologies. The budget structure and process will be reviewed as well as the role of the public administrator and other participants in the process. The course will also examine politics in the budget process and the role of interest groups in decision-making; more specifically, the role of politics in both establishing public spending priorities and in distributing the burden of taxes and fees. Lastly, students will learn about concepts and methodologies relating to program cost analysis and how the budget may be used as a management tool.

MPPA 403 Fundamentals of Public Administration

This course introduces graduate students to the discipline and profession of public administration. It reviews aspects of a dynamic and diverse field of study, focusing on techniques of traditional management anchored in a highly complex legal/political environment. As such, public law and politics are central to understanding how these factors shape the delivery of public and quasi-public goods and services. Considerable attention is devoted to understanding how the discipline emerged along with critical assessments of the various tools and techniques of administration that often affect decision-making. Various theoretical constructs are evaluated and tested in the context of real cases using principles of management, politics, and law. This three-pronged approach for analyzing complex issues in public administration elucidates the challenges and constraints faced by public organizations in general and administrators in particular. Public administrators, policy analysts, and those new to the discipline will find the course useful whether they are currently employed in government, nonprofit organizations, or new to the profession and seeking a career in government. The principles, theories, and concepts covered are applicable to federal, state, and local government administration.

MPPA 404 Microeconomics for Public Policy & Administration

Economics is about choice, and microeconomics is the study of resource allocation choices, beginning with how consumers and producers make choices. This course is aimed at developing student understanding of microeconomic theory, especially as it concerns the relationship between the market economy and public policy. Topics include consumer behavior and the theory of demand; production, cost, supply functions; choices under uncertainty, insurance; competitive equilibrium; subsidies, taxes, price controls; monopoly and monopsony; price discrimination and public utility pricing; monopolistic competition; general equilibrium theory and welfare economics; information theory; and public goods, externalities and market failure.

MPPA 405 Statistics for Research

This course introduces students to basic statistical concepts and methods that are relevant to public policy research and development. Emphasis is on the identification, use, and interpretation of statistical results rather than the theoretical development of statistical concepts and procedures. Topics include descriptive statistics (central tendency, dispersion, and data display); probability; probability distributions; inference (confidence intervals and hypothesis testing); correlation; bivariate regression; contingency tables and the chi-square test; statistical computing. Students will do homework using the R language and RStudio. It is recommended that students take the free, facilitated workshop, R Learning Studio https://sps.northwestern.edu/masters/resources.php#studio in the quarter prior to registering for MPPA 405 Statistics. Students should concentrate on Modules 1, 2, and 5.

MPPA 406 Program Evaluation and Policy Analysis

This course will present a comprehensive overview of program evaluation and policy analysis methods that are important for policy researchers and administrators. These methods help public policy and program analysts systematically value decisions, improve the decision-making process (and hopefully the resultant decisions), value inputs and outcomes, handle uncertainty, and compare aspects of public policy and systems that might not otherwise appear to be comparable. Specific topics covered in this course will include overall evaluation (qualitative and quantitative) design, logic models, implementation and outcome evaluation, decision and cost-benefit analysis.

MPPA 407 Scope and Theory of Public Policy

This course is an introduction to public policy concepts and the public policy process in the United States. It focuses on developing an understanding of what civic decision making and public policy mean and how public policy is made. This course is designed to give MPPA students a basic understanding of the dynamics, political processes, and theoretical frameworks of the public policy-making milieu in the United States, serving as a graduate level survey of the field of public policy. The course considers key theories and concepts including agenda setting, decision-making theory, and methods of analyzing policy outcomes.

Course materials will provide students with the analytical framework to explore why some problems reach the public agenda, why some solutions are adopted and others rejected, and why some policies appear to succeed while others appear to fail. This core course of the MPPA program should be recognized as an “advanced introduction” since the literature in public policy, broadly defined, is very large. It will examine policy making primarily at the national level, but will also look at examples at the state and local level.

MPPA 408 Public Organization Theory and Management

This course focuses on organization theory and management as it applies primarily to public organizations. The unique environment that public organizations face will be emphasized. Students will study a range of theories grounded in the traditional literature over time and leading to contemporary theories and modern application in the public sector. The course requires students to critically examine public organizations and leadership using theories and concepts studied during the class with a particular emphasis on collaborative systems.

MPPA 418 Ethics and Leadership

This course will examine relevant theory and research regarding ethics and leadership in public organizations and provide an opportunity for students to develop a personal foundation for ethical leadership. Students will also look at ethics and leadership from an organizational and systemic level while applying learning to normative questions and case studies.

MPPA 498 Capstone course or MPPA 590 Thesis Research

Mppa 498 capstone.

The capstone project course is the culmination of the MPPA program and demonstrates to faculty a student's mastery of the curriculum and core competencies in the public policy and administration field. Working both in small groups and individually, students complete a comprehensive project chosen in conjunction with their instructor. Students are individually assessed and graded throughout duration of class. Students should retain all course material from previous classes in the program, including textbooks, to successfully complete assignments.

Public Administration Specialization

This specialization prepares students to serve as managers on the local, state and federal levels, and in the nongovernmental organization and nonprofit sectors. Graduates leave with an improved ability to deal with the complex challenges and concerns that face public administrators. Our graduates are prepared to lead an increasingly diverse public workforce toward innovative solutions. 

MPPA 411 The Legislative Process

This course examines the inner workings of Congress. Beginning with a brief review of the Constitutional roles of the American legislative branch, students continue by discussing the federal budget process. The class pays particular attention to how each chamber of Congress works, how the structures and leadership of House and Senate differ, and how those differences affect what legislation get passed. Students will study some ways the legislative process has changed in the last 20 plus years. This course, especially relevant during Congressional elections, will give extra attention to aspects of the political environment Congressional candidates operate in, and how they make the decision to run, during election years. Finally, the class will take a look at the oversight role of Congress and its interactions with the executive branch.

MPPA 413 Foundations of the Nonprofit/NGO Sector

This course examines theories of nonprofit (NPO) and nongovernmental organization (NGO) development and operation. Broad trends shaping NPOs/NGOs, both nationally and globally, are studied from a variety of perspectives. Also, high level operational issues, such as governance and executive management in the NPO/NGO environment, are discussed.

MPPA 417 Public Human Resources

This course is designed to develop students' practical understanding of public human resource management. It is structured to examine the relationships between contemporary public policy-making processes, legal and ethical standards of public human resource management, and key human resource functions. Students will analyze how strategic human resource management and positive organizational frameworks apply to key public human resource functions, including recruiting and retention, compensation and benefits, and skill development. The course will also provide students with action-oriented learning to value the impact of current public policy issues, such as healthcare and immigration reforms, on public organizations in general.

MPPA 420 Disaster Management and Theory

Despite the saying that disasters strike when you least expect it, the reality is that much can be done to prepare for disasters. A disaster can be localized, or it can extend to the entire planet. Some are slow forming crisis situations, and some are sudden occurrences. Each situation can be met with preparation that includes policy development, organizational management, and leadership. Intergovernmental relationships are essential to meeting the challenges domestically, while international relationships and organizations are essential to meeting global challenges. These relationships and challenges will be studied using an analytical approach grounded in theories that support collaborative engagement and administration. Disaster management history, policy development, organizational management, and leadership will serve as the outline leading students to prepare for future disasters and current crises. 

MPPA 421 Administrative Law

This is an introductory master’s level course that focuses on public law generally and administrative law particularly. The course provides students with a thorough grounding in the broad functions of public administrative law with special emphasis on procedural due process and rule-making . Students will learn the genesis of administrative rules and their impact on private and public affairs and the reasons why Congress delegates so much authority to administrative bodies. In addition, students will critically examine the various oversight mechanisms designed to monitor and check administrative abuses. Students will become familiar with the federal register, the scope and power of administrative law judges, the impact of judicial review on agency decisions, and generally understand administrative law “in the context of the American political system.”

Counts toward the Public Administration and Public Policy specializations.

MPPA 430 Behavioral Economics

Why do people not recycle, even when offered monetary incentives? Why has the 'War on Drugs' failed? Why don't people enroll in 401(k) savings plans? Why is the market for knock-off brand-name goods and pirated DVDs/software so large? This class will use behavioral economics to investigate questions related to policy formulation, implementation, framing and failure. With readings from current experts in the field including Ariely, Thaler, Kahneman and Frank, this class will discuss both behavioral economic theory and its application in policy areas such as immigration, the environment, health care, international relations and (of course) the national economy. Does not count towards the Global Health or Data Analytics specializations.

MPPA 580 Global Policy Laboratory

The goal of the class is to provide students with a hands on opportunity to apply core skillsets from the MPPA program, particularly as they relate to an organization facing global, social and economic policy challenges. Students will work for a client organization on a commissioned project supervised by an MPPA faculty member. The goal of the client project is to analyze a specific challenge facing the organization, then develop a set of policy recommendations for the client. Students will work in teams to produce final deliverables. The project will culminate in a live client briefing and a written report (so one site visit by a student team representative may be required). Students should expect to spend 20 hours per week on the course. Counts toward all specializations.

PH 417 Public Health Law: Promoting Healthy Youth Development

This course examines the application of law to critical Public Health issues affecting children and youth including the constitutional and statutory foundation of Public Health law, how legislative and regulatory decisions must negotiate the balance between individual rights and public good and the principles of parens patriae and state police powers. Case studies will illustrate the basis of Public Health jurisprudence at the national level.

Public Policy Specialization

Students in this specialization will be able to understand the factors in public decision-making and policy formulation by honing their analytical skills and increasing their theoretical and practical knowledge in the field. Graduates are able to evaluate competing demands and lead toward innovative and transformative public policy solutions. 

Examines the organization of legislatures that make public policy; specifically, how a bill on Capitol Hill becomes the law of the land. Topics include House and Senate procedure, parliamentary maneuvers, committees, structural issues, information issues, re-election concerns, and partisanship.

MPPA 419 The Strategic Policy Environment

The purpose of this course is to provide students an opportunity to study public policy in a holistic fashion while at the same time focusing on development, implementation, and the evaluation of public policy. This is accomplished by critically analyzing public policy theory and practice alongside a case-study driven examination of public policy successes and failures. The course maintains an emphasis on strategic public policy development, implementation, and evaluation.

Why do people not recycle, even when offered monetary incentives? Why has the 'War on Drugs' failed? Why don't people enroll in 401(k) savings plans? Why is the market for knock-off brand-name goods and pirated DVDs/software so large? This class will use behavioral economics to investigate questions related to policy formulation, implementation, framing and failure. With readings from current experts in the field including Ariely, Thaler, Kahneman and Frank, this class will discuss both behavioral economic theory and its application in policy areas such as immigration, the environment, health care, international relations, and (of course) the national economy. Does not count towards the Global Health or Data Analytics specializations.

MPPA 432 Intergovernmental Relations

This course is designed to develop students’ practical understanding of American intergovernmental relations and intergovernmental management. The course is structured to examine contemporary relationships between U.S. federalism and public policy making processes at the federal, state, and local levels. Students will analyze how various theories of intergovernmental relations apply to key areas of public policy making — federalism and the courts, fiscal federalism, and regulatory federalism. Students will engage in action-oriented learning to synthesize theories of intergovernmental relations and institutions to recommend policy programs and appraise future policy reform.

MPPA 435 Regulatory Policy

This is an advanced specialization course in the politics and practice of governmental regulation, designed to give students the tools needed to understand the many facets of regulatory politics. It will cover broad areas of regulatory policy and procedure from communications, to environment, to consumer products. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to understand, articulate, and assess the political debates around regulatory policy and approaches to regulation. Additionally, students will be able develop policy solutions to address various regulatory problems using standard regulatory tools and best practices.

MPPA 438 Environmental and Climate Policy

Climate and environmental issues are among the most complex and consequential arenas of 21st century public policy. This course will study major US environmental laws and how the courts interpret them, explore efforts to reach international consensus to tackle global environmental threats, compare frameworks for environmental protection regimes, and consider federal natural resource protections. Students will also study the main programs to protect US surface waters and air quality, as well as examine how the US federal system addresses issues as diverse as energy policy, transportation, and land use planning. The international climate regime, including the primary scientific sources of climate change data that set the parameters for international climate policy, is examined. The class will discuss current international accords, the role of nations, youth activists and businesses and evaluate emerging issues that will shape climate solutions.

MPPA 490 Special Topics: Demography, Global Health and Policy

Demography is the formal study of population size/structure and factors associated with its change (i.e., fertility, migration, and mortality). Developing a theoretical and technical understanding of demographic tools can provide a better understanding of population dynamics and how this influences national and global health, as well as regional and national policy. This course provides such a framework by drawing upon seminal readings from demography, economics, public health, and sociology. We will examine issues relating to global aging, old-age dependency ratios, and social policy with respect to Italy, Japan, and the U.S. We will explore fertility and family planning polices with respect to Finland and Sweden. We will also discuss fertility by focusing on China and India. The course will also introduce health policy concepts relating to health care systems/access/disparities with respect to the U.S. and developing countries. Counts toward the Public Policy, Global Policy, and Global Health specializations.

MPPA 490 Special Topics: US Foreign Policy

This course explores contemporary relations between the United States and the world. The primary goal is to give students conceptual and critical tools to understand and analyze how international relations theory, U.S. foreign policy decisions, and current events fit together. It is designed to develop students’ capacity both to explain the foreign policy-making process in the United States, and to better understand the underlying patterns, logic, and implications of American foreign policy in the world at large. The course is divided into three main topics. First, students will discuss the theory that grounds U.S. foreign policy, focusing on U.S. power in the world. The second part of the class will examine the public policy institutions and processes that guide foreign policy formation and implementation. Finally, the last third of the course will review some of the more salient foreign policy challenges facing the U.S. in the 21st century, including a focus on geographic regions. We will discuss how the recent global economic crises may influence foreign policy, and how terrorism and democracy promotion continue to shape U.S. foreign policy.

The goal of the class is to provide students with a hands on opportunity to apply core skillsets from the MPPA program, particularly as they relate to an organization facing global, social and economic policy challenges. Students will work for a client organization on a commissioned project supervised by an MPPA faculty member. The goal of the client project is to analyze a specific challenge facing the organization, then develop a set of policy recommendations for the client. Students will work in teams to produce final deliverables. The project will culminate in a live client briefing and a written report (so one site visit by a student team representative may be required). Students should expect to spend 20 hours per week on the course.

PH 449 Public Health Policy

This course addresses how public policy development and analysis have an impact on the public’s health. The course is designed to provide professionals with the skills for collecting, analyzing and communicating information on public health policy issues using approaches that would be useful in the policymaking arena. Students will learn what policy is; who the policymakers are in public health; who the actors are that are affected by Public Health policy; and the major influences in determining what policy gets implemented, including the science underlying policy proposals. In-person class; see advisor for registration and schedule details.

Global Policy Specialization

This specialization introduces students to key issues addressed by global policy, such as development goals, the environment, financial regulation, nuclear proliferation, democratization and state-building. Graduates build the tools, training and knowledge necessary to lead policy development in an increasingly interdependent world while engaging various governments, private industries, non-governmental organizations and international organizations. 

MPPA 440 International Institutions

This class examines several prominent international organizations, including the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization. The course will focus on both policy controversies and broader theoretical analysis. Students will address why each organization was created, its institutional structure, and current problems confronting each organization. The effects of international organizations on world politics will also be examined. Some of the key questions that will be addressed are: How do IOs foster interstate cooperation and state compliance? How do IOs shape state interests and identities? Why do IOs often fail? How should we think about the pathologies of IOs as global bureaucracies? How do IOs influence NGOs and their strategies? Particular emphasis will be placed on students' ability to think critically, both about the nature of problems that face states as well as development of global governance mechanisms.

MPPA 450 Global Economic Policy

The goal of this course is to give students the knowledge, tools, and confidence to understand, craft, and advocate for incentives and economic policies. Students will be able to apply macroeconomic principles, draw conclusions about the relevance of economic incentives, and explain in substantial detail the current debates covering such topics as economic systems, international trade, monetary policy, global resource allocation, and development economics. While a working understanding of undergraduate-level microeconomics is helpful, and it is recommended students take 404 Microeconomics first, the content of this course will cover these areas in sufficient detail for students without any background. Previously titled International Macroeconomic Policy.

MSGH 421 Globalization and Public Policy

This class introduces and unpacks the concept of global health governance to familiarize students with questions and problems that revolve around it. This is done with the intention to enable students to relate their already existing knowledge of public health to the field of policy-making and apply this new knowledge to their own areas of expertise. The class aims to develop an awareness of actual cases, which will enable the students to understand the way successful policies work. Since academic research is never a solitary activity, students will be expected to discuss the readings and lectures with their peers along the way. The instructor will prompt the debate by positing particular questions.

Prerequisite: MSGH 405 Foundations of Global Health and Global Burden of Disease

MPPA 490 Special Topics: U.S. Foreign Policy

Global health specialization.

(Courses are only offered online. This specialization is not available in the accelerated degree option.)

Government agencies and major foundations are investing billions to combat largely treatable chronic diseases that claim far too many lives in low- and middle-income countries. This specialization is designed to enable students, such as nonprofit administrators, policy analysts, social entrepreneurs and others, to make a meaningful difference in healthcare access and outcomes. Students will navigate the legal and regulatory aspects of health-related industries around the world and evaluate cultural and ethical considerations inherent in global health contexts.

MSGH 405 Foundations of Global Health

This course introduces the student to global health epidemiology, international public health, and global medicine. Students will gain knowledge of some of the major global health problems, their socioeconomic determinants, and their impact on individuals, populations, and societies. This 10-week course is structured around a series of pre-recorded lectures, readings, short answer questions, and an interactive discussion forum. The course is designed to be taken by students of widely varying backgrounds who may be interested in pursuing further study and/or careers in global health.

MSGH 417 Global Health Systems

Overview of the structure of the U.S. health systems followed by a selective international comparison of other health delivery systems including their relationships to social policies and economic factors.

MSGH 427 Grant Writing and Fundraising

This course is designed to introduce students to grant writing and fundraising in global health. Topics include assessing and communicating community needs, planning a grant-fundable program, researching funders, writing a successful application, and strategies for fundraising. Students will apply course material to the development of a proposal for a global health grant maker.

MSGH 450 Global Health Initiatives

This course addresses how to address and maximize sustainability of global health initiatives, including burdens on infrastructure, environment, and human systems.

PH 490 Advanced Global Public Health

Advanced Global Public Health will provide an in depth exploration of the current approaches to eradicating long-term social and economic inequalities in health outcomes around the world. We will begin with a review of the current state of global health, highlighting the areas of major gains since 2000, discourse on global health governance, and current trends and emerging health challenges (e.g., chronic metabolic diseases, emerging/re-emerging infectious diseases, humanitarian emergencies). Prerequisite: MSGH 405 Foundations of Global Health.

In-person class; see advisor for registration and schedule details.

Data Analytics for Public Policy Specialization

The data analytics specialization is intended for students who will use data analytics and statistics to address policy issues. Policy analysts and researchers who can use sophisticated statistical and computational methods can add insight and value to public policy decision-making by using big data to improve public services in public health, transportation, and law enforcement, predict and avert famine and droughts, and improve city infrastructures.

Please note that students must take the core MPPA 405 Statistics for Research before beginning the specialization.

MSDS 400 Math for Data Scientists

Students learn techniques for building and interpreting mathematical models of real-world phenomena in and across multiple disciplines, including linear algebra, discrete mathematics, probability, and calculus, with an emphasis on applications in data science and data engineering. This is for students who want a firm understanding or review of these fields of mathematics prior to enrolling in courses that assume understanding of mathematical concepts.

MSDS 410 Supervised Learning Methods

This course introduces traditional statistics and data modeling for supervised learning problems, as employed in observational and experimental research. With supervised learning there is a clear distinction between explanatory and response variables. The objective is to predict responses, whether they be quantitative as with multiple regression or categorical as with logistic regression and multinomial logit models. Students work on research and programming assignments, exploring data, identifying appropriate models, and validating models. They utilize techniques for observational and experimental research design, data visualization, variable transformation, model diagnostics, and model selection.

MSDS 420 Database Systems and Data Preparation

Behind every analytics project is an analytical data source. In this course, students explore the fundamentals of data management and data preparation. Students acquire hands-on experience with various data file formats, working with quantitative data and text, relational database systems, and document database systems. They access, organize, clean, prepare, transform, and explore data, using database shells, query and scripting languages, and analytical software. This is a case-study and project-based course with a strong programming component.

Prerequisites: MSDS 402-DL Introduction to Data Science.

MSDS 455 Data Visualization

This course begins with a review of human perception and cognition, drawing upon psychological studies of perceptual accuracy and preferences. The course reviews principles of graphic design, what makes for a good graph, and why some data visualizations effectively present information and others do not. It considers visualization as a component of systems for data science and presents examples of exploratory data analysis, visualizing time, networks, and maps. It reviews methods for static and interactive graphics and introduces tools for building web-browser-based presentations. This is a project-based course with programming assignments.

Prerequisites: MSDS 400-DL Math for Data Scientists and MSDS 401-DL Statistical Analysis.

MSDS 460 Decision Analytics

This course covers fundamental concepts, solution techniques, modeling approaches, and applications of decision analytics. It introduces commonly used methods of optimization, simulation and decision analysis techniques for prescriptive analytics in business. Students explore linear programming, network optimization, integer linear programming, goal programming, multiple objective optimization, nonlinear programming, metaheuristic algorithms, stochastic simulation, queuing modeling, decision analysis, and Markov decision processes. Students develop a contextual understanding of techniques useful for managerial decision support. They implement decision-analytic techniques using a state-of-the-art analytical modeling platform. This is a problem and project-based course.

MSDS 476 Business Process Analytics

This course introduces data-driven management methods, including business process workflows, mining, modeling , and simulation, activity-based costing, constrained optimization, and predictive analytics. Data from business operations, properly recorded in time-stamped logs of activities and their associated costs, represent essential information for business management. Analyzing business activities provides a guide to business intelligence and business process improvements, including those associated with robotic process automation and digital transformation. By reviewing detailed case studies and using commercial and open-source analytics platforms, students learn how data and models can be used to guide management decisions.

About the Final Project

Students may pursue their capstone experience independently or as part of a team. As their final course, students take either the individual research project in an independent study format or the classroom final project class in which students integrate the knowledge they have gained in the core curriculum in work assigned by the instructor. In both cases students are guided by faculty in exploring the body of knowledge on public policy and administration while contributing research of practical value to the field. The capstone 590 thesis project and 498 capstone class count as one unit of credit each.

MPPA 498 Capstone Project

Students may choose this course or registration in the 590 individual thesis research to fulfill their capstone requirement.

MPPA 590 Thesis Research

The 590 Thesis Research is an individual research project in an independent study format. The paper is written under the supervision of an approved faculty member and presents an opportunity to research and explore a topic thoroughly. The typical time to complete the master’s thesis is four months to a year.

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THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

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Degree Requirements

Learn more about the program by visiting the Department of Psychology

See related Interdisciplinary Clusters and Certificates

Degree Types: PhD

The Doctoral Program in Psychology prepares students to be future leaders in scientific psychology through programs in five areas: clinical psychology; personality, development & health psychology; cognitive psychology; social psychology; and brain, behavior, & cognition.

Program faculty and graduate students conduct some of the most exciting and influential research being done in the psychological sciences today. Graduate students in our program receive rigorous training in methodology, statistics, and broad content areas in psychology.

Students take both general courses and those specific to their areas of interest. Students also engage in a series of research projects and assist with undergraduate teaching. Collaboration with faculty members within and outside the student’s area is very common. Many graduates seek academic careers.

Additional resources:

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Program Statistics

Visit PhD Program Statistics for statistics such as program admissions, enrollment, student demographics and more.

Program Contact

Contact Shelley Powers Graduate Program Coordinator 847-491-3494

The following requirements are in addition to, or further elaborate upon, those requirements outlined in  The Graduate School Policy Guide .

The department offers no terminal master's degree, but students must earn a master's degree as one of the requirements for the PhD degree. To obtain the MA or MS degree, students take the courses required for the specialized field and complete a master's thesis.

Total Units Required: 27

  See Department Guide for more Information

Other PhD Requirements

• Examinations: For admission to candidacy, written examination or paper.
• Research/Projects:  In addition to master's project and PhD dissertation, students are expected to engage in supervised research projects
• PhD Dissertation:  Result of independent research in specialized field
• Final Evaluations:  Oral examination on dissertation
• Other:  Teaching assignment ( see department guide )

Last Updated: September 12, 2023

DEPARTMENT OF NEUROBIOLOGY

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Winter Quarter 2025

DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES

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Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern

Associate professor, pre-modern and modern eastern europe; jewish history.

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Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern  (Ph.D. Moscow, 1988; Brandeis, 2001) is an Associate Professor of Jewish History in History Department and the Crown Family Center of Jewish Studies at Northwestern University. He teaches Early Modern, Modern, and East European Jewish history and culture, Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah, and Slavic-Jewish Literatures. He holds a Ph.D. in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University (2001) and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Moscow University (1988). He is a recipient of multiple grants, including Rothschild Fellowship, Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture grants, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Fulbright. He has been a Sensibar Visiting Professor at Spertus College in Chicago; a Visiting Scholar at Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sociales in Paris; a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and a Visiting Professor at the University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2009, he received a Northwestern University Distinguished Teaching Award. He published more than a hundred articles in history and comparative literature and authored three books,  Jews in the Russian Army, 1827-1917: Drafted into Modernity  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),  The Anti-Imperial Choice: the Making of the Ukrainian Jew  (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), and  Lenin’s Jews  (forthcoming with Yale University Press, 2010). At present he is working on a book, “Shtetl as it Was, 1790-1830,” reconstructing and contextualizing the material culture of an East European trading town.

Northwestern, Columbia, and UPenn have the best EMBA programs in the country. Here’s why

Preston Fore is a staff writer at Fortune Recommends, covering education and its intersection with business, technology, and beyond. Preston graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied journalism and global studies. His previous work can be found in The Daily Tar Heel and CNN. 

Jasmine Suarez is a senior editor at Fortune Recommends, where she was hired to build and launch the department in 2022. Before joining Fortune, she was a senior editor at Business Insider , where she led various verticals on the personal finance team .   In the past, she’s worked for Red Ventures, Adweek, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and more. 

Fortune’s ranking of the best executive MBA programs was released this week—and the top programs received a slight shake up. This year, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management was deemed the No. 1 best executive program, with Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) right behind. 

An executive MBA is designed for those with extensive work experience who are looking to advance their career to the next level—whether that is within their existing company or somewhere new. The more experienced cohorts allow for more advanced discussions of some of the biggest challenges facing the business world.

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Tom O’Toole, associate dean for executive programs at the Kellogg School of Management , says his school is ranked the best time and again in part due to their commitment to continuously improving their program to produce leaders of today and tomorrow. He pointed toward new AI-focused electives as an example.

“There are a lot of places that someone can go for their executive MBA degree, (but) you are not going to find a place that is stronger in every dimension than Kellogg, nor more committed to staying and becoming continuously stronger in every dimension than Kellogg,” O’Toole adds.

The Wharton School highlighted their program’s commitment to attracting diverse and talented students across their three campuses—in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Global, as shared by Mauro Guillen, vice dean of MBA programs for executives at the school. 

The 5 best executive MBA programs

What makes the best executive MBA programs the best?

Fortune used 11 different metrics to create its executive MBA ranking (read more about it on our executive MBA methodology page ), but the top programs consistently have rigorous curriculum and a track record of success. Northwestern, Columbia, UPenn, UMichigan, and UChicago have a history of producing Fortune 1000 c-suite executives and global leaders. For example, the current mayor of Phoenix—the fifth largest city in the country—is an alum of Wharton’s executive MBA program. 

Guillen says Wharton’s MBA program for executives equips students with analytical, decision, and leadership tools to further their careers in senior managerial positions or entrepreneurial endeavors. 

“We offer unparalleled depth when it comes to learning about finance, marketing, operations, people skills, or data analytics, for example. And every graduate learns how to use these skills strategically, and with a view to assuming ever-greater leadership responsibilities within their organizations. We prepare leaders to be systematic and creative in their thinking,” he tells Fortune .

Outside of the data used to create the ranking, some interesting findings were discovered. For example, about 65% of all executive MBA students are male, whereas about 34% are female, and about one-third of students are of color. 

The average class size of core executive MBA classes is 34 students. But, if you enroll at the No. 1 program—Northwestern—the average class size is nearly double, at about 60 students, according to data provided by the school.

O'Toole says because students all over the world see the differentiating characteristics of Kellogg, it creases a very high demand for their program.

Pursuing an executive MBA also is not cheap. The average approximate cost of a program is $114,000, and many programs, especially those at top-ranked programs, can be over $200,000. However, there are also many decently-ranked programs that cost half the average, with tuition closer to $50,000.

The 5 cheapest executive MBA programs

Luckily, executive MBAs are designed for working professionals—meaning students oftentimes do not have to forgo their typical salary. Furthermore, many are often able to apply the skills they learned as soon as the next day, increasing their chances of career advancement.  

Guillen adds that nearly half of Wharton EMBA students get promoted or switch careers within a few months of graduating; one in ten, he says, pursue entrepreneurship. 

“These effects happen quite fast, and they last a lifetime,” Guillen says.

Ranking changes

Fortune amended its ranking metrics this year to include many more factors, including tuition, graduation rate, and search engine search volume, so there was some dramatic ranking movement.

Of those who participated last time, Xavier University, University of South Florida (Muma), and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler) saw the largest jumps, with increases of 32, 19, and 17 spots respectively. Columbia Business School also saw a significant jump—rising from No. 18 to No. 2

University of California–Irvine (Merage), Yale University, and Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead) were among the biggest droppers in rank, going down 23, 19, and 18 spots, respectively.

Overall, though, ranking may play just a small part in determining if an executive MBA is worth it . For those who are further in their career and looking to become a trusted business leader, pursuing the degree has historically led to significant return on investment .

See how the schools you’re considering fared in  Fortune’ s rankings of the best  executive,  full-time,  and  online  MBA programs.

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Harvard Business Analytics Program

Earn a certificate that includes the Harvard name

The Harvard Business Analytics Program is an online certificate program designed for established leaders in any industry. The program leverages a rigorous cross-disciplinary curriculum to help students not just analyze data but understand it, translate it, and incorporate it into strategy at the top levels of their organizations.