Graduate School Admission
If you are interested in pursuing a graduate degree in the ECE Department at the University of Massachusetts, please see the following web sites for official information:
Applying to my Lab
Note: The following comments are my personal opinion and do not reflect any official admission policy by our department or the university.
I receive emails from interested applicants every day. Many of them are "mass-mailings" where a generic email is broadcast to practically every faculty member of every ECE department on this continent. In other cases, people take the time to write a personal email. Due to the limited amount of time that I have available, do not expect me to answer your email. However, I make an effort to respond to emails that seem genuine and contain questions that are not already answered on this page.
If you consider applying to the UMass ECE program to work with me, I am very happy that you are interested in doing so. Outstanding graduate students are the life blood of a good research lab. Please consider the following:
Ph.D. applicants:
- I am always interested in hiring outstanding applicants for my lab. The main constraint to how many doctoral students I can supervise is the availablility of external research funding. I am trying to support all my doctoral students through research assistantships. Therefore I may or may not hire doctoral students in any given year.
- When you apply, it should be clear that your present skill set is suitable for being a successful member in my lab. While you acquire many skills during your Ph.D., I expect that you are already able to do independent research, write papers, and communicate well. Your technical background should somewhat match the areas of research pursued in my lab.
M.S. applicants:
- While I support my doctoral students with research assistantships, I typically do not provide financial support to M.S. students. On some occasions there may be exceptions, but in general you are expected to pay your own way for the M.S. degree. It may be possible to get funding through on-campus jobs.
- If you are interested in doing your M.S. thesis with me, contact me towards the end of your first year on campus. By then, you have taken some courses, identified areas of interest, and received grades to show your academic skills. Practically all my M.S. students start their thesis after two semesters of course work.