Is it possible to get a professional degree in chess? I am a software engineer by profession, and a chess enthusiast (around 1600 rated).
I would like to know is there any professional university certified course like Masters etc. in chess?

Can someone opt for Chess as a means of getting Ph.D or do some research in it?

You can tell me answers like becoming titled players is the same as that, but i am talking about academic university level course.

Is yes, it is there? Can someone post me a link to that?
There are a couple that come to mind, but I am not sure of the present status of them:

Texas Tech has SPICE (Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) founded by Susan Polgar and is the first chess institute of it's kind in the world.

Aberdeen University in Scotland was preparing to launch the world's first doctoral program in Chess.

As far as research goes, you can research anything you want about chess, but keep in mind that one normally does not research chess alone, but researches things build up to chess.  By things, I might mean certain data structures or algorithms that are found in chess software.  Other avenues of research can be explored besides the technical part of it as well.

Equating a chess title to a degree title is too subjective.