 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Explore Graduate Studies in CSC. My name is Sanikol Abanovich and I'm an assistant professor at computer science and engineering department at the University of Michigan. And I will be your host today. Now, we're going to start, although I believe some are still slowly joining us. But we will make sure that they also get all of the information as they join. Now, I first want to say thank you all for joining us for this workshop today. It is really a great pleasure to see you. Normally, this workshop would happen in person at our Beister building that you can see on the slide. It would have an opportunity to spend a day at the University of Michigan, meet with faculty and students, get to know the campus and the city of Ann Arbor. Unfortunately, this year we're virtual due to the challenges that we're all facing. But I still hope that we're going to have a good program for you today. Before we welcome you all and tell you more about computer science and engineering department at the University of Michigan and this workshop, I just want to say that there are some links that we want to share with you. These are the links that you already received in your email, but I will paste them again in the chat right now. Out of these six links, the first three are highly relevant to today. The first one is the permission to record this workshop, this virtual workshop is being recorded. So please take a moment and fill out the first link, the form from the first link. And then today we're also going to have two panels that I'm going to talk about more in just a moment. And there are links to a Slido where you'll be able to ask some questions from our panelists. So throughout the day, please take a moment and fill out some questions. Because if you don't, then I will be forced to ask our panelists some really, really hard questions. So it's on you. Also, of course, during our panels, you'll have an opportunity to add questions to these links, and then I'll be able to ask those questions, our panelists. And then, of course, there are three additional links that we also prepared for you. One is a link to a virtual tour of both our campus and Arbor and the kind of research that we do, including student life. So you have also links to two vlogs from two of our graduate students that will help you give you a better idea of what graduate students do at the computer science and engineering department at the University of Michigan. So today, we have a few activities for you, all of them are virtual. First, during this welcome hour, I will tell you a little bit more about the research at CSC, student life, and also City of Ann Arbor, just to give you a bit of a preview. And then we'll take a break. During this break, you will have an opportunity to grab breakfast if you're somewhere on the west coast, lunch if you're on the east coast, and well, I guess any other meal if you're somewhere else in the world. But also, during that time, we will keep this Zoom meeting going. I will randomly split you into breakout rooms and give you an opportunity to, while you're catching a break, chat with your peers, with other attendees. I'll give you an opportunity to meet them just like you would had you been here in person at Ann Arbor. And then at 1pm Eastern time, all of these times are Eastern time, we will come back for a faculty panel where we will have five faculty join us and answer your questions. As I mentioned before, there is a link to Slido. It is a web application where you can ask your questions to our panelists, and then we will select questions and ask them, and then we'll have an opportunity to answer them for you. We will have a short little break between the faculty panel and graduate student panel, where again, I will try to split you in groups together with our panelists to give you an opportunity to briefly chat with them in smaller groups. After which we will move on to the graduate student panel, where I hope you will have an opportunity to ask your future peers and colleagues more about student life and anything that is relevant to being a graduate student. And then we'll take another short break, give you an opportunity to talk to our panelists again, but once we come back, we will actually go through steps required to apply to graduate school. And in particular, we're going to focus on some of the materials that you have to prepare and perhaps give you some tips and suggestions for how to prepare those materials. And then we're going to have some closing notes and of course give you an opportunity to ask any parting questions at that time. So as I mentioned before, in-person event would give you an opportunity to learn more about the research that we do from the researchers themselves, both faculty and students. Unfortunately today, you're stuck with me. So I will try my best to give you an overview of different research and concentration areas in computer science and engineering. Now, at CSC, the University of Michigan, we have almost, well, actually we have all subfields of computer science well represented. They're researchers in theory, systems, hardware, interactive systems, and AI. And actually the photo that you're seeing here is of Alex Halderman, one of the faculty and actually one of our lecturers who used to be his PhD student, working on one of the servers in our Weister building. Alex is one of the experts in the field of computer security in particular working on securing the elections. So any kind of technology used today to support our democratic process in the United States, a lot of it is based on technology, and Alex and his students and his research group are working hard to making sure that they address any kind of threats to that technology. At the University of Michigan, we have researchers who are working on novel ubiquitous computing hardware and devices who are creating some amazing technology, like the example that you see here of a wearable device that can be used for voice authentication. We have research in AI and machine learning that enable novel interactive systems, for example, advanced conversational computing systems. And as you can see, at CSC, it's not just the faculty and students. We also have extensive collaborations with the industry to enable this kind of technology and make sure that the work that we do has an impact outside of just academia. Researchers also look at the security of different hardware systems. So this is Professor Kevin Fu, demoing one of his creations in which they have shown that many of our existing hardware devices, especially medical hardware devices, are susceptible to attacks using nothing more than just sound waves. And perhaps you had an opportunity to also read about some of these stories recently about how some of the researchers and security from the University of Michigan CSC were able to break into Alexa, not just from sound waves, but also using lasers and other interesting technologies. Some of you interested in security might have also heard about different attacks on the Intel architectures like foreshadow. That is also work that has been done at the University of Michigan. There are many interactive systems that researchers at the University of Michigan create in various domains ranging from health, transportation, anything that improves the quality of life of the different people and their well-being. There's a focus on accessibility, not just in the classes that we offer, but also researchers who dedicate their research to this important topic. One of the examples that you're seeing here is an intelligent robotic wheelchair developed at CSC that can help with orientation and mobility for people who use these wheelchairs. It is actually a part of an accessibility class thought by Professor David Chesney, where every year students come together to solve real-life problems for people who are actually invited to present and tell students about the challenges that they face, in particular, accessibility challenges, and that the students come together and try to find innovative solutions to address those challenges. Of course, there's a lot of robots always moving around bicer building. There's a very strong robotics group. So the example here that you see is magic. It's a little robot that is exceptionally good at avoiding hitting people. And some of you might have seen interesting videos online of it trying to kind of find its way through a crowd of people walking and at times trying to run into it. It's a very, very funny video to see. And there are other examples as well. So this is odd job. It's one of the two robots that you will see either in different lab spaces or moving throughout the building. In this particular robot knows how to grasp objects based on their depth, based on its depth and color perception. And it's very interesting to see how it does that from a pile of different objects in front of it. So of course, that's just a small overview of some of the fun things that happen at the University of Michigan. I really invite you to look at the virtual campus tour link there among many videos. You will also see some examples, some demos of the research that happens at the University of Michigan CSC. And I hope that you will find some interesting things that perhaps you may want to work on in the future as well. Computer Science and Engineering department is located in the North Campus, one of three campuses at the University of Michigan. In particular, we are located at the bicer building that I already mentioned to you. This is a modern building that houses both faculty and graduate student offices, lab spaces, and different workspaces, lectures, and also large halls, presentation areas, and conference rooms. What you're seeing here is actually a photo of our weekly tea hour while we were still back at the bicer building before the pandemic, before we all started working from home. Here you can see students socializing on the third floor right there in front of our kitchen. So just looking at this photo makes me miss some of these events that we would normally have. If you were to climb to one of the terraces of our building, this is the view that you would see the view of the clock tower and just across this grove. There is the Deuterstadt Center, which houses a large library, many multimedia classrooms, even a maker space, and most importantly, a coffee shop as well. Right there next to it, we have the Pierpont Commons, where we have the cafeteria, campus computer shop. There's a bank, credit union, bookstore, and also areas for students where students can study, socialize, and so on. Now we are located on the North Campus, as I mentioned before, which is just a 15 minute ride, actually maybe more like a 10 minute ride on one of our Michigan blue buses, which are free to students to the central campus, which is actually located in downtown and in the center, and it has quite a bit to offer, both when it comes to different academic buildings, but also places where students again can come together and socialize. The two of you are probably aware that Michigan, University of Michigan is a huge sports, or that we are huge sports fans. So there's the usual coal go blue. The University of Michigan has not just the Michigan stadium, which is one of the largest stadiums for college football, but also stadiums for other sports, basketball, soccer, and many more together with a lot of facilities that support those sports, support the athletes, and also that can be some of them that are specifically for faculty and students to engage in and use. The University of Michigan has many libraries, all with access to students, and in addition to these different libraries, we also have museums. We have auditoriums. So if you're interested in these types of events and these types of activities, you will definitely not be lacking them. Of course, once we come back to our campus. And of course, there's a lot of buildings where we hold different events and host visitors. And visitors such as yourself if you were to come and visit us at some point. Now, as I mentioned before, University of Michigan campus is located in Ann Arbor, a small city that has quite a bit to offer. And again, I invite you to take a look at the link that we shared with you that highlights some of the interesting spots in Ann Arbor and things that you can do. And of course, I would invite you to ask questions about student life in Ann Arbor once we are all joined by our graduate student panel later in the day. But just as a just a few highlights. So Ann Arbor has a lot to offer like I mentioned, one of the things certainly are coffee shops. Now I can tell you that they're very good coffee shops and you can take my word for it because I am a bit of a coffee snob. And of course, there's a lot of entertainment. Restaurants shops. And of course, a lot of culture that that goes with living in a university city like Ann Arbor. We have farmers markets. Many shops, as I mentioned before, there's opportunities for a lot of outdoor activities as well at many, many parks that we have in Ann Arbor. We organize fairs throughout the year. And of course, those are usually in the city itself and open to everyone to attend. Of course, one of the important things for you are is probably student life. So in CSC we have a lot of student organizations. Some examples are a sample of CS ladies plus and all of these student organization organize their own events, try to raise awareness about the issues that they are interested in and how they're sold how they solve them. All of these organizations are kind of under the umbrella of CSIC or computer science and engineering graduate student organization, which all of the students are all the graduate students are part of once they join the University of Michigan. In spare time students also take part in many activities around the campus. Now I can't tell if this photo was taken during Michigan summer or winter. But you can also you can definitely see that there are some of these interesting activities outside in outside just outside of our biker building. Students take part in, you know, sports, they take breaks and play. They organize, they take part in organized activities. Most of these activities are organized actually by CSIC. Most of these social activities are social activities. For example, the weekly tea time that I've already mentioned before to you that actually now has a virtual instantiation of the event. While we are in the pandemic. There are many groups that come together and have fun activities like play games. And especially there is a special event. Every semester, we have a games class offered at computer science and engineering department where at the end of the class, all of the students all of the student groups that were part of the class they developed their own little games, and then they have an opportunity to present those games to everyone in CSC. So this is a game night that are organized in the biker building in a large dishman hole at the bottom of the building where students come together and they just have fun time playing the games that their peers created. So this was just a very, very quick overview of some of the fun things that happen at CSC, the research and the work that we do at CSC at the University of Michigan. Again, please, please take a moment and take a look at some of the links that we've that we've prepared for you. Now, we still have some time before we take our break. And I would like to take a moment and invite any questions from you from the audience. And try to answer them. And then, once we're done, we can take a moment break into smaller groups and allow you to also meet other participants in the workshop, until we then come back for our faculty panel. So please feel free to for now use the chat in zoom and ask any questions that you might have. Alright, so we have a question in chat. So how much is the stipend for CSC are a stease is their summer support and does the department offer fellowships. These are all excellent questions, and some of them I can, I can try and answer right away. Now, I just want to point out that we have two programs for graduate students master's program and PhD program PhD students do receive stipend. They are usually working as GSR as a graduate students research assistance when where they do research as part of their dissertation. And then they also have an opportunity to be a GSI so graduate student instructors, which gives you some exposure to teaching and experience that is exceptionally valuable, especially for those who are hoping to go into the academia after their PhD for master's students. These master's programs are what we what we say what we call terminal programs. They're the programs after which usually there's an expectation that master's students will go in the industry and currently there are no established stipends specifically for master's students, although some master's students are able to find GSRA positions and work with different research labs at at the university. And note here that the expectation is that master's students will mostly be focusing on the coursework. So there is no expectation that you must do research, but there are some opportunities at the same time there are also opportunities for fellowships. Some of them are at the department level. Some of them are from the industry from different foundations including National Science Fated Foundation and so on. We have a comment as well that says people already posted some questions in the faculty panel questions page. Thank you for that observation and thank you all who have already posted questions there. I would like to save those questions for our panel. And answer any questions that maybe I can, any administrative questions that I can answer while we are here, and then we'll leave others for the faculty panel to discuss. What is the best way to know whether a certain professor takes PhD students this year or not. So this is an excellent question for the faculty panel, but I will just answer this quickly for you. The best way is to try and contact the faculty directly. Of course, you know, everyone is busy, including you and the faculty, I know it's not easy to send these kinds of cold emails. But if you are able to structure email in a very nice way where you are able to describe your interest, where you're able to show that you understand the research interest of the faculty that you're hoping to work with. Then you will increase your chances to actually get a response, a response that will also include answers to these kinds of questions. So I'd say the best way to find that out is to contact our faculty directly. And actually, that is something that I would recommend all of you do after this workshop. Usually there would be some opportunities to meet directly with individual faculty during our workshop. That is not necessarily possible in a virtual format. But I did talk to a lot of my colleagues and a lot of them said that they would be happy to receive some of these questions directed at them and try and answer them that way. Okay, then we have a question that says approximately how long do PhD students in CSE take to complete their dissertation from the point that they start. So this is a very good question but a question that is fairly difficult to answer simply because there's a lot of differences between student dissertations. Some are able to complete it in a shorter period of time, some are able to complete it in a longer period of time and for those who take a little bit longer, there's no need to pass judgment. It could be just that the kind of topic that they tackle required more time. But I would say that the normally students take about five years to complete the PhD program, and again some take a little bit shorter, some take longer, and that is of course fine. Can you tell us a bit about your research and teaching at Michigan? Now, I am not sure if this is specifically about my own research and teaching or about research and teaching in general. I will assume that it's the broader question just because not everyone might have the same kind of interest that I do. I will just mention that I am a computer scientist with focus on research in human computer interaction or HCI, where I study how humans interact with technology and try to create innovative new designs that help people improve the quality of their lives and their well-being. But more broadly, like I said at the beginning, the research here at University of Michigan is very, very broad. We tackle every aspect of computer science and engineering, and in addition to that, we also have very, very close collaborations with other departments and schools within University of Michigan. Those include, for example, School of Information, which we have very, very close relationship with. A lot of faculty also work closely with Michigan Medicine and do a lot of work in the healthcare domain. We also have strengths in and connections with automotive industry, and then of course more broadly with other industries as well. When it comes to teaching, also I would like to point out that just like with research, with teaching, we cover every aspect of computer science and engineering, and there's a broad offering of courses in every what we like to call concentration area. So the five areas that I mentioned before, theory, AI, systems, hardware, and then interactive systems. And for each of those concentration areas, we have what we call breath courses, courses that give you an overview of those fields. So required as part of both master's and PhD programs. And then we have many different depth courses that go in depth in various often cutting edge subfields of computer science and engineering. In addition to that, you of course again have the opportunity to take classes from any of the other parts of the University and the other colleges and schools. In fact, not just that it's encouraged that there's a requirement that students should take a cognate course and get exposure to some of the interesting knowledge outside of just simply CSE research. Okay. I'm sorry I'm just going through some of these questions some of them are private and I will not automatically assume that I should read them directly, but I will try to answer once I answer all of the all of the other questions. How does the department help support students who are struggling to publish and or move to candidacy. This is a very important question, because it shows that, you know, we are in this together when we admit you into the program. Our goal is for you to be successful. Now, what we do is we do have what we call yearly reviews, which are not so much reviews of the student performance as much as opportunities for faculty to come together and look at ways in which we can support the students, even of course students, especially students who may be struggling, for example, and then try and find different strategies to help them. There are also many, many organizations, not just at the department level, but at the university level that can help both with, you know, technical skills side of things, help with writing, with communication to things like help students deal with mental health and some of the, you know, the pressures and the stresses that they might experience as part of their graduate studies. In addition to this, we provide financial support to all of the, guarantee financial support to all of the PhD students. And we also have a large number of faculty, which helps with any kind of issues that might arise or any kind of challenges. And students are working directly with their advisors and maybe the relationship is not working out. There are mechanisms that help students switch advisors, there's enough faculty in the department so that students actually have a choice if some of these previous relationships are not working out and so on. But thank you, that is an excellent question and actually I would invite you to ask that question again, both at the faculty panel and at the graduate student panel, because some of our faculty are actually involved in some of these initiatives. And of course graduate students would know very well what you're talking about because they're experiencing this as well. Is there any change in the application timeline due to the pandemic. I do not believe that there are specifically changes in the timeline itself, but there are some changes when it comes to relaxing some of the requirements. So like many universities out there, we do not specifically require GREs this year. But of course, there are still certain things that that we have to require, though they may be challenging to to to get this this year, one being for example recommendation letters. For non PhD students master's only. Is it okay to be still motivated by research at the University of Michigan and do they get a chance to work project with the professor who is working in that field. This is an excellent question. So, yes, the answer is definitely yes. A lot of our master's students are actually motivated by the cutting edge research that we do at the University of Michigan, not just to learn how to do some of these cutting edge things through classes but actually get involved with research and there are many opportunities from opportunities to do independent studies with different faculty where you can actually get credit for doing that research, but also as I mentioned before sometimes even in a relationship where you're working directly as a GSRA or graduate student research assistant. I had wonderful experience working with with many master's students and I have to say what one of my PhD students one of my current PhD students. I'm sorry, two of them were master's students, one at CSC one at EC at the University of Michigan, and they just simply then continued on with with their PhD and, you know, those are just two examples but there's there's so many examples of students doing that. So yes, this is this is, you know, not just welcome but also encouraged in many ways. I'm sorry I just need to keep track of the questions. May I ask when the faculty panel questions link will be closed I'm thinking of referring back to it later today. That is a very good question we will definitely have it open during the faculty panel. We obviously after the faculty panel is is done we will close it for additional questions but I will do what I can to make the questions still available to you. Of course, we're also going to make the recordings of this workshop available to you so you can refer back to some of these panels and actually not just hear the questions but hear the answers. Okay, somebody just thank you Sonya Sonya is one of our administrators working at the CSC graduate office who confirmed that December 15 is the deadline for PhD applications and January 15 for master's applications. All right, so we have another question here for someone who has been in industry for two plus years now and wishing to join the master's only program, which are our are preferred industry deck or academic, please ignore the So, I don't necessarily think it says please ignore it if we're going to talk about how to apply to graduate school I don't think we will specifically touch on this question simply because there's a lot of material we have to cover and a lot of tips to give you about specifically how to prepare materials. But I would say that you have, when it comes to opportunities to take classes that will prepare you both for for industry and for research, they exist out there actually in fact I would say that the way that our master's program is structure. The idea is that you will take, you will get some practical knowledge about computer science and engineering work that you will be able to take into the industry. So, that's definitely something that you will have an opportunity to do not not so much academic research, unless you choose to do so yourself right get involved in the research. Just short answer for that as well. Of course, I entered it already. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you Sonia. That's that's an excellent answer. Well, I'll try to answer a couple of more of these. We're coming close to the end of this. section. Will master program applications be at disadvantage if they don't submit gres course. No, we cannot say you're not required to submit gres course and then go back behind your back and count them and, and, you know, put you at a disadvantage. So no, we specifically do not ask for gres course this year. You are still, I believe, able to submit them, if you choose to do so. But, but like I said, there will not be a criteria this year. Our students from interdisciplinary. Sorry, this is a private question so I shouldn't have just assumed. If you do send private questions. Please send me another private message and let me know if you give me the permission to actually read the question out loud and answer it. Okay, I just got the permission. Thank you so much for that. Our students from interdisciplinary backgrounds accepted if they are interested in the HCI focus area for PhD, or is the expectation still that the students have a strong technical background. This is, this is a very, very good question and does not necessarily apply only to the field of human computer interaction or HCI, although HCI maybe is very, very interdisciplinary that way. I will say that there are some expectations that even if you don't necessarily have exceptionally strong technical background that you will be able to develop it. Especially because we want to make sure that that you are successful in the program, right. So, in CSE, the classes that you will be taking the research that you will be doing is highly technical, even HCI research is technical HCI research. And there the expectation is that you will be able to both study computer systems, but also design and create it. But we have many, many examples. I don't want to, I don't want my answer to discourage you because we have many examples of students who come from other fields and take the right kind of courses that you can for this kind of work. One of the students that just came to mind is a student who was a JD, had a law degree, and then decided to take the master's program here at CSE, get the background necessary to be able to do technical work and is now a PhD student at CSE. So, I hope that that answer your question to some degree. So, I don't think that you will be automatically at a disadvantage, but I know that the Graduate Admissions Committee always looks to make sure that that we are not setting up anyone for failure if we are not able to provide you with the education that will help you succeed. A couple of more questions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Oh, sorry, that's Sonya again, clarifying. Thank you Sonya. What is different for people applying straight from undergrad without any work experience or grad school experience. There are a lot of things that come down to the individual level, and we will talk a little bit more about this in how to apply to graduate school, how to call out some of these individual strengths that you have. Whether you are an undergraduate student, whether you're a student who had some additional experience either in the industry or graduate school experience, but it's really about finding ways to describe, persuade the Graduate Admissions Committee that you will be successful in the program, regardless of where you're coming from, right, what your background is and what are the kind of current opportunities that you were able to get. Because at the end of the day, graduate school, both Masters and PhD program, it's cool. If you already knew how to do everything that we teach you, you wouldn't have to come to school. We would just give you, you know, a professor position, let's say, if you're going for PhD. So instead, here, it shouldn't be the focus necessarily on have you already done everything that we expect from PhD students. The focus should be on why will the program, not just our program, but programs more broadly. Why are they, why will they give you the kind of knowledge that you need to accomplish your future goals? But I will talk a little bit more about this during the workshop itself. And please, you know, if I do not specifically touch on this question again, please remind me. Let me look through this very quickly because we only have five more minutes. There's another private question that again, I will just invite the person who posted it to tell me in another private message whether they're fine with me sharing this or not so I will move on. But can come back to that question if we have time. How many students does your department take for PhD programs? I assume that this is per year. So this is, we, there's a difference between how many admission offers we make versus how many students actually articulate or how many of them accept our offers. We tend to send about 100, a little bit over 100, a little bit over 100 admissions. I know this year it was around 100, maybe around 110. The year before it was around 120. And of course, the Sonya can, can correct me if I'm wrong in these numbers. Okay, we have a permission for one of these questions. So, while evaluating PhD applications are people coming from terminal MS programs at a disadvantage compared to students coming directly from undergraduate programs, or are there any different set of expectations. So, again, this is very specific to your case, I wouldn't say that there's anyone who is immediately at a disadvantage. You're all coming with different experiences. And you're all coming with different strengths, and you're all coming with different goals. So being able to clearly articulate those goals, and why a PhD or a master's program will help you accomplish those goals. And why you will be able to successfully complete the program is something that you should highlight based on the experiences and the background that you have. We do not put anyone at a disadvantage, simply because they, you know, took a master's program if anything, if you have a master's degree, you already have some additional experience that you can talk about and you can say why it prepared you for the PhD program.