Choosing Martin Held as MSc/PhD Advisor

Guidelines

In recent years it has become fashionable among students to send out mass emails to prospective advisors world-wide in an attempt to secure a funded research position. That is, I have been flooded by email requests for internships and pre-doctoral positions. I don't want to be rude but I simply do not have the time to answer each and every inquiry personally, just in order to state the same basic information over and over again. I'm hoping that the following guidelines will help to clarify the situation.

I welcome applications by foreign students, and I am certainly willing to work with foreign students. (I have had several foreign students.) However, prospective students should understand and follow the following guidelines: Every student is personally responsible for

• obtaining admission at the University of Salzburg for the studies sought,
• settling all visa and immigration issues that might apply to foreign nationals for coming to Austria,
• acquiring enough funds to cover all expenses related to living and studying at Salzburg.

Let me clearly state that it is pointless to try to argue your way around those guidelines. In particular, please understand that I have no administrative or legal means to help with the first two issues. In any case, I will not offer a salaried position to provide financial support during your stay here at Salzburg, unless

• I had a fair chance to interact with you personally prior to making any financial committment, or
• I "know" you and your previous advisors based on publications and research work.

If you'd come with your own financial support then please make this very clear when contacting me. I will follow these guidelines particularly strictly if you'd prefer to come "only" for 1-2 months of internship.

Please have a look at Studium - Zulassung for information on how to be admitted to studying at the Universität Salzburg. Be warned that those pages are in German. By the way, while I'm willing to communicate with you in English, a solid knowledge of German is imperative for MSc studies, and a good working knowledge of German is advisable for PhD studies.

Information for students/researchers who wish to come to Austria is available at The Researcher's Mobility Portal Austria. The Austrian Database for Scholarships and Research Grants provides information on grants for both incoming and outgoing research visits. See also The European Researcher's Mobility Portal.

It is the task of the prospective student to suggest a research topic that falls into my fields of interest; you may also want to have a look at current and past research projects of mine. It is a waste of time for both of us to send me an application if your interests and prior experience are focused on, say, database systems or distributed computing. (And, no, I won't forward your application to other colleagues since I don't want to add more emails to this type of mass emails.) In any case, I will only supervise theses in computer science that shall lead to the Austrian academic degrees "Dipl.-Ing." (or MSc) or "Dr. techn." (or technical doctorate, PhD).

• need to have a solid background in algorithms and data structures,
• should have experience with computational geometry or, at least, the willingness to acquire the foundations of computational geometry prior to coming to work with me,
• should know the basics of computer graphics,
• should be experienced in structured programming in C or C++ (in a Unix environment),
• should be fluent in English,
• should be committed to working hard.

If you decide to send electronic material to me then, please, make sure to use document formats that are universally readable -- such as PDF! Please understand that I work on Unix/Linux platforms. Thus, a document written in MS Word or similar stuff is not easily readable for me! (And any information that I cannot read easily will be ignored. Sorry.)

file last modified: Tuesday, 24-Jan-2012 19:13:47 CET Copyright © 2012 Martin Held. All rights reserved.