The most important first hurdle to coming to UT is getting in. UT's Computer Engineering is currently in the top 10 ECE departments in the United States and thus getting in is very competitive (our acceptance rate is less than 20% from a very self-selected pool of applicants.) Each application is read by multiple professors who all have to agree that you should be admitted. Thus, I cannot help in getting you admitted to UT.
I am always looking for brilliant,
motivated, and very hardworking students who have already proven
themselves in
research. Determining who will be a good researcher is
virtually
impossible from a GPA or standardized tests. The best indicator,
of
course, is a track record of doing internationally published
research.
Thus, it is important to start doing research as an undergraduate, to
see if
you are good at it and if you like it (I know it's hard to believe, but
not
everyone does.)
In addition to being brilliant, motivated, hardworking and a good
researcher, a
graduate student must be interested in my research area and work well
with me
to be effective in my research group. I am building
infrastructure right
now that should give my group a strong advantage in our area of
research.
That infrastructure requires strong teamwork since it is far too large
for a
single graduate student to accomplish in a reasonable time. I
expect all
of my graduate students to be good citizens and contribute to the
common
infrastructure for everyone's benefit.
One important part of working well with me and my group is English ability, both spoken and written. No matter how brilliant you are, if I cannot communicate effectively with you, I cannot be your advisor (unfortunately, I cannot speak any other language well enough to advise a student in that language.) Strong English ability is important for virtually all faculty I know (well, there are a few that speak another language fluently but, even so, papers are almost always written in English), so this general advice. Spending time improving your English is well worth the effort.
The best way to figure out if a student and I will work well together is to work together. I generally recruit students who have taken my classes or those who TA for me. If you can both stand my class and excel in it, there is a good chance we can work well together. Likewise for my TAs.
I very rarely provide research assistantship support for students who I have not first worked with as either a TA or in my class. There are many reasons for this but the two most important are (i) I have limited funds (like all professors) and (ii) I have limited bandwidth (also like all professors.)
Even
if I
had unlimited funds, I currently cannot absorb more than approximately
one
new student per semester. Each new
student needs attention and training that comes from me and/or a senior
graduate student. At this point, I have
very little time and the senior graduate students are busy trying
to get their research done. Thus, accepting new
students is very difficult. I need to be able to see how you
would benefit my research group and whether I would benefit you.
I would
consider
giving an RA
to someone I have never worked with in two cases. The first is if the
student
has a strong personal recommendation (i.e., that person calls me or
writes me
an email) from someone I know well. Thus, if I know one of your
recommenders well
and you are serious about coming to UT, please have that person contact
me
directly. The only other possibility of an RA before I work with you in
class
is a strong publication record in conferences I know about and attend.
At this
point such students are rare, but I hope to change that.
I sometimes have the ability to guarantee a year of TA and a summer of
support
and the opportunity to work in my research group on a trial
period. That
can help get a visa to come to the
What You Need to Do
If you are interested in working with me, please send me a brief email
stating
1.
Your research interests and how
you think
they align with mine. If you have a
specific project in mind, let me know.
2.
What research you have done and
how it has
been recognized (where it has been published, awards, etc.)
3.
The schools you have attended.
4.
Your class rank in your
department of your
school and in your entire school if that is available.
A form
letter (I get
a ton of
those) will be discarded without a response. Please use the
following
sentence, with exactly the same capitalization, as the subject of the
email
"Apple Juice is Good For You". That will indicate to me that
you have actually read these instructions and will guarantee that I
will read your email. I probably receive about a factor of 10
more emails that do not have that subject line than ones that do, so I
have saved myself a tremendous amount of time.
At this point, I am not taking foreign undergraduate students looking for a summer position. There is so much to learn and the costs of moving out for a summer are such that a single summer would not be productive.
I am
interested in
working with
UT undergraduates on research as well as excellent undergrads from
other US
universities. I learned a lot from my
undergraduate
research
and I believe that the research group I worked for got a lot out of my
undergraduate
research as well. Please contact me with the
same "Apple Juice is Good For You" email subject
line and information if you are interested. Though I would like
to eventually be able to take any student interested in research, since
I am just starting out, I can only consider those who have taken a
serious class in computer architecture (360N) and are interested in the
same sorts of research topics that I am. It is a far more
rewarding experience if you have some basic knowledge that can be
gotten in class, rather than having to learn all of it on the job.