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The Ph.D. degree in OSE requires a minimum of 32 semester hours of coursework to cover the core topics articulated in the essential knowledge list (EKL). The program of study is designed to give the student breadth of knowledge in ocean science and engineering. Student must choose the OSE Seminar plus 4 courses spanning at least three core topics, at least one from each school.
| HOURS REQUIRED | |
| OSE Core Courses | 14 |
| School of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) | |
| TOPIC: Coastal & Ocean Mechanics | |
| Environmental Fluid Mechanics (CEE 6261) (Fall) | |
| Coastal Mechanics (CEE 8813) (Spring, even years) | |
| Coastal Engineering (CEE 4225/8813) (Fall, even years) | |
| TOPIC: Environmental Biotechnology | |
| Microbial Principles in Environmental Engineering (CEE 6311) (Fall) | |
| Biological Processes (CEE 6331) (Spring, not every year) | |
| Environmental Microbial Genomics (CEE 6720) (Spring) | |
| School of Biological Sciences (BIO) | |
| TOPIC: Marine Ecology & Conservation | |
| Marine Ecology (BIOL 6417) (Spring, odd years) | |
| Biological Oceanography (BIOL 6221) (Spring, even years) | |
| TOPIC: Biological & Microbial Oceanography | |
| Biological Oceanography (BIOL 6221) (Spring, odd years) | |
| Microbial Ecology (BIOL 6410) (Spring, even years) | |
| School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) | |
| TOPIC: Physical and Chemical Oceanography | |
| Physical and Chemical Oceanography (EAS 6305) (Fall) | |
| Global Biogeochemical Cycles (EAS 6122) (Fall) | |
| Advanced Environmental Data Analysis (EAS 6490) (Fall) | |
| TOPIC: Ocean & Climate | |
| Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans (6140) (Fall) | |
| Climate & Global Change (EAS 4410/8803) (TBD) | |
| Advanced Environmental Data Analysis (EAS 6490) (Fall) | |
| OSE Seminar - 2hr (EAS 8802) | |
| Ethics/RCR training - pass/fail 0hr | |
| OSE Specialization | 9 |
| Elective courses that increase depth of understanding in the research Theme chosen by the PhD candidate (e.g. Ocean Sustainability, Ocean Technology, Ocean & Climate, Marine Living Resources, or Coastal Ocean Systems). | |
| Minor | 9 |
| Courses outside the student’s selected research area (equivalent to Institute approved minor) | |
| TOTAL SEMESTER HOURS | 32 |
Students can request to modify one of the classes associated with the core topics pending approval by their PhD Advising Committee. The requirement of at least one course from each School cannot be altered.
COURSES | list & description
Below is a list and description of all courses listed under the OSE program. Courses in bold are part of the OSE Core Topics. Note that specialization electives and minor can be chosen outside of the OSE course list. A full catalog of graduate courses offered at Georgia Tech is available on the registrar website
| Course Number | Course Title | Course Description |
| School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) | ||
| EAS 6122* | Global Biogeochemical Cycles | A multi-disciplinary exploration of the chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes that cycle the nutrient elements through the Earth system and thereby maintain a habitable planet. |
| EAS 6124 | Introduction to Oceanography | Introduction to the ocean sciences, with particular focus on the role of the ocean in the geological, biological, chemical, physical, climatic, and human aspects of the Earth system. |
| EAS 6130 | Earth System Modeling | Introduction to computer modeling with application to earth systems (e.g. partial differential equations, numerical schemes, advection/diffusion, wave equation). |
| EAS 6136 | Paleoclimatology and Paleooceanography | The history of the Earth's climate, covering methods for reconstructing past climate and the mechanisms behind these climate changes. |
| EAS 6140* | Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans | Thermodynamics of ocean and atmosphere, fundamental relationships, simple systems, gasses and solutions, atmopsheric and ocean applications. |
| EAS 6145 | Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere and Oceans | Foundations for understanding the physical principles of remote sensing of the atmosphere and oceans. |
| EAS 6212 | Geochemical Kinetics | Fundamental principles of biogeochemical kinetics and mathematical treatment of coupled transport and reaction in natural environments. Interpretation of field and experimental data using kinetic theory. |
| EAS 6216 | Isotope Geochemistry | Biogeochemical significance of nuclear isotopes, both radioactive and stable. |
| EAS 6305* | Physical and Chemical Oceanography | Fundamental principles of physical, chemical and biological oceanography, focusing on the basic processes and mechanisms at work in the oceans including equation of motion in rotating frame of reference, carbonate chemistry, air-sea gas transfer, photosynthesis and respiration. |
| EAS 6490* | Advanced Environmental Data Analysis | Theories and applications underlying the statistical analysis of environmental data, both in the space, time and spectral domains. |
| EAS 6502 | Introductory Fluid Dynamics and Synoptic Meteorology | Fundamental concepts underlying our current understanding of atmospheric fluid dynamics and its relation to mid latitude weather processes. |
| EAS 6522 | Dynamics of the Tropical Atmospheres and Oceans | Ocean-atmosphere interaction and modeling in the tropics from regional to global scale. |
| EAS 6532 | Large-Scale Atmospheric Circulations | Phenomenology and dynamics of large-scale atmospheric variations having time scales of a week and longer. |
| EAS 6765 | Geomicrobiology | Interactions between microorganisms and the geosphere; microbial energetics and genetics; geochemical controls on microbial diversity and activity; redox and acid-base balances; biogeochemical cycles; evolution. |
| EAS 6795 | Atmospheric Aerosols | Chemical and physical properties of natural and anthropogenic aerosols. Sources, transport, transformation, and fate of primary/secondary, organic/inorganic, atmospheric semi-volatiles and aerosols. |
| EAS 6672 | Ocean Dynamics | Geophysical fluid dynamics, theory and modeling of the large-scale ocean circulation. |
| EAS 6131 | Ocean Modeling | Numerical ocean modeling in ranging complexity from simple 2D shallow water and quasi-geostrophic models, to layered and full 3D primitive equations ocean models. |
| EAS 6133 | Marine Ecosystem Modeling | Numerical modeling of marine ecosystems from simple Predator-Prey models and lower-trophic level to more advanced multiple classes trophic levels and fish models, such as Individual Base Models (IBM). |
| EAS 4410/8803 | Climate and Global Change | The climate of the Earth, its radiation budget, greenhouse gases and their sources and sinks, potential changes due to anthropogenic activities, detection of climate changes. |
| EAS 6155 | Math Methods for Geophysical Fluid Dynamics | Fundamental mathematical tools for graduate students interested in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD) and related disciplines. |
| EAS 8802 | Ocean Science and Engineering Seminar | Seminar Series |
| School of Biological Sciences (BIO) | ||
| BIOL 6221 | Biological Oceanography | An introduction to the major biological processes in the ocean, including primary production, elemental cycling, food webs, and fisheries. |
| BIOL 6410 | Microbial Ecology | An overview of the microorganisms, microbial systems, and microbial processes that impact Earth's biogeochemical cycles and provide ecosystem services to human beings. |
| BIOL 6417 | Marine Ecology | An overview of the ecological and evolutionary patterns, processes, and mechanisms affecting the organization, structure, and function of a broad variety of marine communities. |
| BIOL 6418 | Microbial Physiology | Study of the physiology of growth and metabolic activities of microorganisms. |
| BIOL 6620 | Aquatic Chemical Ecology | The course focuses on understanding the chemical mechanisms of aquatic signaling and the cascading effects on population regulation, community organization, and ecosystem function. |
| BIOL 6756 | Signaling Molecules | The diversity of chemical signals between organisms and their structural specificities will be presented along with chemical and biological methods for isolating signaling molecules. |
| BIOL 6765* | Geomicrobiology | Interactions between microorganisms and the geosphere; microbial energetics and genetics; geochemical controls on microbial diversity and activity; redox and acid-base balances; biogeochemical cycles; evolution. |
| School of Civil & Environmental Engineering | ||
| CEE 6251 | Fluid Mechanics | Concepts of linear and angular deformation, vorticity, and conservation of mass. Development of Navier-Stokes with solutions: steady and unsteady uniform laminar, vortex, creeping, and potential flow. |
| CEE 6261 | Environmental Fluid Mechanics | Dynamics, mixing, and contaminant transport in surface water bodies, including lakes, rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters. Introduction to numerical models. Prediction of mixing zones. |
| CEE 6262 | Advanced Enviromental Fluid Mechanics | Buoyancy modifications to the mixing and dynamics of pollutant discharges and surface water bodies. Gathering and analysis of laboratory and field data for mixing problems. |
| CEE 6293 | Hydrodynamic Stability and Turbulence | Flow in stability and turbulence are important in virtually all environmental flows. Fundamental stability, transition, and turbulent concepts along with their engineering relevance will be introduced. |
| CEE 6331 | Biological Processes | Microbial growth kinetics and bioenergetics, theory, modeling, and application of biological processes employed in water, wastewater, and hazardous waste treatment systems as well as site bioremediation. |
| CEE 6810 | Linear Wave Mechanics | Introduction to linear wave mechanics with emphasis on boundary value problems. Topics include wavemakers, boundary layers, wave/current interactions, long waves, edge waves and wave forces. |
| CEE 6811 | Nonlinear Wave Mechanics | Advanced solutions of nonlinear wave equations including introduction to perturbation methods, shallow and deep water solutions, nonlinear wave interactions and stream function solutions. |
| CEE 6821 | Nearshore Hydrodyanmics | Introduction to surfzone hydrodynamics including properties of breaking waves, undertow, longshore currents, wave setup, rip currents, infragravity waves, shear waves, and combined wave/current boundary layers. |
| CEE 7751 | Computational Fluid Mechanics | Numerical methods for solving the time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations in complex geometrics, including theory, implementation, and applications. |
| CEE 6720 | Environmental Microbial Genomics | Principles of contemporary microbiological research and associated bioinformatics techniques. |
| CEE 6311 | Microbial Principles | Microbiological principles with emphasis on microbial nutrition and growth, inhibition and control of growth, biochemical thermodynamics, metabolic pathways, enzyme and microbial kinetics. |
| CEE 8803 | Coastal Mechanics | Basic concepts of fluids, wave mechanics, nearshore and coastal hydrodynamics |
| CEE 6221 | Physical Hydrology | Radiation and energy budget, precipitation dynamics, boundary layer turbulence, evapotraspiration, infilitration |
| CEE 6215 | Coastal Structures | Overview, design and analyses of coastal, marine and offshore structures. Focus on hydrodynamic loading |
| CEE 6216 | Coastal Hazards | Introduction to state-of-the-art coastal hazards such as tsunami waves, mass fows, explosions and asteroids; hurricane storm surges and flooding, sea level rize and climate change |
