“UIS is not known as a research school; it is a research school if do your research there.”
My Ph.D. advisor told me the above when I was about to start my career here in UIS. I want to use his words to encourage every student/friend who want to do research in whatever circumstances he/she is in.
For those who want to do research with me, I encourage you to read this page carefully to understand the requirements before we schedule a meeting.
Short answer: Two semesters. Meet weekly. 10-15 hours per/week.
Time is the most valuable resource required in research. In general, I expect you to work at least two semesters with me. Please understand that time commitment applies both for you and for me.
I wish I can tell you that you can just work with me for a few weeks or a summer and then can have a shinny publication on your CV. But that is not the case. Not for the research I do. Not for the backgrounds my students usually have.
Please find the (incomplete) list of topics on this page.
Generally, there are two types of topics.
Original research. The research I do to publish original/new results. It will usually require more effort from both you and me. And I will make sure I decompose meaningful tasks to get you engaged in the research.
Study topics. I have broad interests in theoretical computer science and mathematics. Every now and then there are topics that I want to learn. These type of topics can provide very good training for you as a undergraduate student or master student. These type of topics are called Senior Theses or Capstone Project in other institution, see for example Jim Fix’s (Reed College) topics. Although we don’t officially have Capstones in UIS, I want to things along that line.
Once we start working on a project/topic. I hope you can document your work at different stages (as code, report, slides, poster, video, paper). It will be very useful for your future job/school application, and will be important for me to show off your work, too.
Below are a list of useful tools.
Every person who does his/her work should can get paid. But currently I don’t have funding to support that belief.
It is my job to write you a letter if you do research with me. It will be hard for me to write a strong one for you if you exit in the middle. I will actually be reluctant in writing you a letter in this circumstance.
Just tell me you want to leave. It will save both your time and mine this way.
Just send me a letter to schedule regular meetings for the new semester. I will not initiate the that conversation. I tried that before and only to learn that the students had already decided to leave. So I will assume if you don’t contact me early in a semester, you’re leaving.
Three. I used to think I can advise every student approaching me. But I’ve learned my lesson.
I need something that I can learn about you, whatever you believe that can help. Here is a Twitter post that makes some useful suggestion in a funny way.
No. I don’t have any machine learning project currently.
I would appreciate it if you register research credits from me. Then I will get pay by a very small amount by UIS. But you don’t have to.