Please read the following texts carefully before sending me emails about prospective Ph.D. opportunities. It will greatly increase your chances and save you time and effort!
Please read the following texts carefully before sending me emails about prospective Ph.D. opportunities. It will greatly increase your chances and save you time and effort!
Thank you for your interest!
Before sending an email and/or applying to the RPI Ph.D. program, please take the following important notes:
You are encouraged to send me an email before applying to check whether our backgrounds align. I will carefully read each email; however, please understand that I cannot reply to all inquiries due to time constraints.
I might reply to your email much later than your first inquiry. If you do not hear back from me in a few weeks, it does not necessarily mean I'm not considering your application.
I work in the intersection between theory and machine learning. In practical terms, it means the main approach of my research is to use mathematical proofs. While I value empirical evaluations and do conduct experiments, demonstrating programming-based machine learning projects without showing sufficient experience in math and analysis will not be enough.
Mentioning one or many of my research directions will be helpful only if you are able to articulate the insights you have on these topics. A sentence like "I found your paper XXX very insightful" is not helpful at all. On the other hand, something like "I read your XXX paper on hierarchical clustering. I have worked on bottom-up linkage-based HC problems, and I wonder whether your techniques can be applied there as well" will be helpful. Of course, I might reply and try to see from the conversation whether you actually understand what you are talking about.
If you are very interested in the theoretical direction and willing to spend tons of effort there, and if you are already at RPI, you can email me without demonstrating much experience in math proofs. We can talk in person and figure things out.
Enclosing your CV/Resume is helpful. On the other hand, please do not send your test scores, and please only send PDF files.
If you want to find more about my opinion on advising and more generally, about how to enjoy your Ph.D. life (:)), you can read this article and this article.
Regardless of whether we ended up working together, I wish you the best of luck in your Ph.D. application!