Many thanks for your interest in working with me! Please take a look at the following text before you drop a message to me.

Qualifications:

• For prospective Ph.D. students

Most importantly,  I expect you to be extremely self-motivated and persistent in your research. My job as an advisor is to guide you in the right direction, but ultimately it will be your responsibility to take ownership of research projects and push them along to completion. I can help you in crafting and deciding what that research project may look like, but ultimately it is your project. Beyond this, I also have two general qualifications in my students.

1. Mathematical maturity. Formulating rigorous math questions, designing correct algorithms and proving theorems to characterize your methods are three important aspects of doing research with me. You should be comfortable with the idea of writing and reading proofs and learning challenging new mathematical concepts. Before you work with me, you should at least be familiar with preliminary-level math including linear algebra, basic probability and statistics, and basic algorithms. 

2. Coding proficiency. You should have experience coding in at least a couple different languages. It’s not terribly important what those languages are, but ideally you’ll have some experience coding in a lower-level language where you can make things fast and efficient (e.g., C or C++), as well experience writing code more quickly in a scripting language (e.g., Python or Matlab).

You don’t have to feel like an expert in both categories, but you should have basic competency and interest in both areas, and specific strengths in one of them. Here are some useful links for Ph.D. applicants to search for a good advisor: 

1. "What do I ask/look for in a PhD advisor?" guide from Columbia CS

2. How to Choose a Thesis Advisor by Prof. Michael Loui

3. Some guidance for emailing professors whose groups you are interested in joining

• For prospective master and undergraduate students

You still need to be very self-motivated to push the research project, though maybe with less commitment in time. I expect you to at least have basic competency and interest in the two aforementioned areas. 

Commitment: I ask for a commitment of at least a single full term (summer or semester) from undergraduate students. Semester research has a minimum commitment of 6 hours/week and is generally for credit but if you contact me early enough, we can work on a proposal for a PURA stipend. Here are some links for master and undergraduate students:

1. GT President's Undergraduate Research Award (PURA) Summer 2023 deadline is March 3, Fall 2023 deadline is May 26 -- see link for future deadlines.

2. A Student's Guide to Undergraduate Research (Nature Career Column)

3. How to email a professor about research (from UC Santa Cruz)

• For prospective postdocs:

I am currently only considering postdocs through the institute President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (deadline for Fall 2023 has passed). If you are interested in applying for this program with me as one of your faculty mentors please send me an email with a CV and short summary of research interests/goals. 

Working with me:

If you are interested in doing research with me and you meet the above qualifications, that is great and please feel free drop me an email. 

In the email, you should be able to give me a few reasons why you are specifically working with me, especially what kind of research topics or papers motivate you to work with me. I know you are probably also reaching out to many other professors, and this is perfectly normal and acceptable. However, I receive many emails from prospective students, and I’m much less likely to prioritize an email if it appears to be a template message that could just as easily be sent to hundreds of other professors.