Program Requirements in Biomedical Physics PhD

Completion of the BMP Core and Depth Curriculum (30 or more units).
Meet the University residency requirements for a PhD degree consisting of a minimum of 135 Stanford units with a maximum of 45 of these units being external transfer credits.
A cumulative GPA of 3.0 or greater to remain in good academic standing.
All required courses should be taken for a letter grade, and must be passed with a grade of B- or better.
Qualifying examination. PhD students will be expected to take and pass an oral qualifying examination during their second year in the program. Students will assemble a qualifying examination committee of eligible faculty as per University rules. Following the general structure used in other SoM programs, the examination will consist of a written portion and an oral portion. The written portion will be a 5-page NIH-style proposal of the thesis research, to be distributed to the qualifying examination committee at least one week prior to the oral examination. At the oral examination the student will present the proposal in a short talk. Qualifying examination committee members will then pose questions to the candidate on the proposed research and the underlying science. The examination will cover both the proposal itself and foundational knowledge in medical physics, imaging, and clinical diagnostics. The examination committee will then grade the student’s performance as either pass or fail. Students failing the examination will be allowed to retake it once. Students who fail the qualifying examination twice will be offered the option to exit the program with a Master’s degree, having completed the extent of coursework required by Stanford University for this degree.
After application for Terminal Graduate Registration (TGR) status and completion of 135 units, the PhD candidate should register each quarter for RAD 802 TGR PhD Dissertation so that their research effort may be counted toward the degree.

Department: Biomedical Physics