Graduate student advising

Information for prospective and current graduate students

I would strongly recommend graduate students to pass the qualifying exams as soon as they can, ideally by the end of their first year. I also recommend graduate students to take reading courses with their potential advisors to know their advising styles. If you are interested in working with me, you should contact me as early as you can. Overall, I expect you to work hard. In particular, I recommend you to pass the general exam soon enough so there is time for your thesis.

At the very beginning, you are expected to do some reading to learn the background materials for your research. During this time, I would suggest research problems that I think worth working on. After your first project, you may have some follow-up problems to work on, or you may have found collaborators. As you mature as a mathematician, our meetings will become less frequent and less structured. 

At early stages, we meet once a week for roughly one hour. Before the meeting, you are expected to have spent enough time reading and working on what we discussed last time, have tried hard to think about how to prove a particular statement, and have written clearly in your notes your progress and things you want to discuss. During the meeting, you are expected to write on the board with clear statements about what you have proved or explain the difficulties that you wish to discuss. After the meeting, you are expected to write me an email summarizing the meeting, as well as latex some of our discussions into a proof.

You are expected to attend the dynamics working seminar and the geometry & topology seminar, as well as the reading groups that I organize. You are strongly recommended to attend department colloquium and other seminar talks that you are interested in.


Useful links for graduate students


Postdoctoral supervision