Opportunities

Graduate Students

Graduate school is a big step up from undergraduate studies, mostly because you will start to work on problems that don’t always have a known answer (this is in stark contrast to the kinds of things you are asked to do in undergraduate projects). For me, the aim of doing graduate school is to learn and create specialist knowledge, and to develop the skills to frame problems, create and evaluate solutions, share ideas effectively, and manage yourself (and others).

At the University of Calgary, there are several graduate programs. For research, the relevant programs are:

• the Master of Science (MSc) (with or without a Software Specialization)
  • This is normally a 2-year Thesis-based program.
  • Typically, you do 4 technical elective courses over two terms (first 8 months) and then do supervised research to produce a thesis.
  • Exceptional students admitted as MSc students may be transferred to the PhD program.
• the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  • This is normally a 4-year Thesis-based program.
  • Typically, you do 2 technical elective courses over two terms (first 8 months) and then do supervised research to produce a thesis.
  • Our program has a candidacy process that includes a research proposal and oral field-of-study exam

Note that, in Canada, MSc and PhD programs are typically fully-funded, i.e., funding is guaranteed for a minimum duration (2 years for MSc, 4 years for PhD) – what this means, however, is that sometimes, excellent students are not admitted due to funding constraints. Details on the minimum funding policy can be found on our Program Resources page.

In our department, individual supervisors make admission decisions (assuming that students meet the minimum entry requirements), so it is highly recommended that you reach out to potential supervisors in advance of application deadlines.

So how do you reach out to potential supervisors? This is a tricky thing. Occasionally, there will be targeted calls (for instance, check my LinkedIn posts from time to time). Other times, you can certainly try to reach out via email. Unfortunately, I typically receive a high volume of emails, so it is not uncommon that you do not get a response. Most times, I’m less likely to reply to the emails I receive if they come across as generic, with things like:

“Dear Prof. XXXX,

I recently read your paper (insert paper here). Your research interests in (copy paste from website), (copy paste from website), (copy paste from website), greatly align with my interests.”

I’m looking for a more genuine engagement with my work beyond a quick scrape of this website (or my Google Scholar).

So, if you’re genuinely interested in working with me, do a bit of homework, and tell me a bit about what you have taken away from my work. Tell me what you’re looking for in a supervisor. Ask me for a copy of my papers if you can’t get them! I know that this is time consuming, but I genuinely believe that finding a good alignment between supervisor (and their style) and student is really, really, really important for something as arduous as grad studies.

Moreover, if you then tell me your background is in stuff like, medical imaging or power converters, I don’t really see how our research backgrounds are really all that aligned…so I’ll probably not reply to your email. Also, despite doing research using GenAI/LLMs, I’m somewhat skeptical of any writing that “seems” very LLM generated.

Undergraduate Opportunities

At this point in time, I’m open to undergraduate students seeking research opportunities at the University of Calgary. There are a few ways to “get into research”, including:

Summer Research

• applying for UCalgary’s Program for Undergraduate Research Experience (PURE)
  • This is a competitive process that provides up to $7,500 for students undertake a summer research project.
  • The deadline is typically late January, which means that you should really reach out to me in the middle of the Fall term so that we can work out if there’s a mutual interest in a research area.
  • Typically, UCalgary students look for PURE opportunities at the end of their 2nd year. Unfortunately, with how the ENEL and ENSF programs are structured, you won’t have really learned enough to do much in the way of research in digital hardware or embedded systems (unless you already have a background in that stuff). If your Python/programming skills are good, we can probably work on things like cybersecurity/LLM stuff. In this case, the summer research project with me will be much more “exploratory” to try and give you a taste of what research looks like.
  • If you have a “free” summer because you’ve already done your internship, but you’ve got a year left from your double-degree program, then you might find that the kind of research I like to do is better aligned with your skills, so we can try to be a bit more ambitious – in the past, I’ve had students successfully do a “late” summer research project that segues into an undergraduate thesis.

Undergraduate thesis

• Undergraduate thesis option (ENEL 592/594) – if you aren’t entirely satisfied with the tech electives in your final year, you might want to consider doing 6 units of research under the supervision of an academic.
  • ENEL 592/594 is offered in an ad hoc manner; you should reach out to potential supervisors during the spring/summer and convince them that you are really interested in research. The process typically involves defining a project, and then your potential supervisor trying to get approval from the Department Head to create a new section of the course for you.
  • Profs. in our department don’t get specific time set aside for supervising students in ENEL 592/594 – we choose to do this as additional workload.
  • Supervisors can supervise, at most, 2 students per academic year in ENEL 592/594. So there is certainly an element of “first-come, first-served,” for better or for worse.

Volunteering

• Occasionally, undergraduates reach out to me asking if they can “volunteer” to be a research assistant.
• In principle, I don’t really like unremunerated work – this means that I won’t usually have volunteers in the critical path of any of my ongoing projects; it’s unfair to “demand” things from volunteers.
• Instead, my approach to volunteers is mutual volunteering – if you want to “try out research,” I’ll happily volunteer some of my time to meet with you, point you in directions of things to explore, talk about research methods, philosophy, etc. – so, if you put the effort in, I will give you guidance. This might be a good (but admittedly, low stakes) way to “get started” and possibly transition to more formal arrangement, but this is very much a “it’s for your benefit” kind of thing.
  • I find that this might inadvertently weed out folks that are only marginally interested in research (at least, in my area, in the way that I operate), as occasionally, folks drop off (or other parts of life take over). If you’re just looking for CV padding, then this is not really a good way to do so (at least, with me).