Tag Archives: professor

Algorithms advertising for incoming grad students

One of my first professorial tasks will be a 4-minute talk to incoming grad students. I don’t expect any of the students in the audience will be explicitly interested in algorithms research.  After all, when they applied, there weren’t any algorithms profs here to advise them.  So, I’m not sure what the best use of this time is.

I could ignore the fact that they are likely interested in doing everything but proofs and give my 4 minute blurb as though there were potentially interested students in the audience.  I could appeal to the coadvising role of “whatever your research is, there is probably an algorithmic viewpoint”.  I could just say “this is what algorithms is” and leave it at that.  Besides, (and lucky for me) all the CS Ph.D. students have to take a grad algorithms class – and guess who is teaching that in the first quarter.

However, as far as I know, the EE and masters students don’t have to take the algorithms class.  Do you think I should be convincing them to?

Newly minted

I just started – a week before my official start date – as an assistant professor at Oregon State University in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.  I feel very luck to be here, to have landed a job in a year when many of few job openings were rescinded because of the crumbling economy, let alone in an incredibly friendly department in a beautiful town near mountains and oceans.

I am alone as a TCS person in the department, and I’m sure I will feel some isolation as a result.  I am really hoping that I will be able to work on some interesting problems with non-TCS people.  My background, though, is in very traditional algorithmic work, so I am sure there will be growing pains. I’ll start with what will probably be the first of many requests for advice: any advice?