This course bridges the transition from graduate level competency to doctoral-level inquiry. Learners develop doctoral reading, critical synthesis, and scholarly communication skills through structured engagement with frontier AI research, including applied AI, generative AI, agentic systems, and responsible AI governance. They identify a significant doctoral problem, justify a knowledge or practice gap, design a contribution framework, align an evidence and evaluation strategy, and address ethical, governance, security, and impact considerations. The course culminates in a doctoral seminar that provides a structured forum for presenting, defending, and refining research ideas before peers and faculty, building the presentation and scholarly argumentation skills required for doctoral candidacy, conference participation, and dissertation defense.