 And I want to welcome you to the Graduate Student Panel. So I would just like to ask our panelists to turn their camera on. And then just want to give you a bit of an overview of the format of the panel, just so that we are all on the same page. So we will begin by giving an opportunity to our panelists to introduce themselves. I'm going to call on them in no particular order other than the order that I see them in my Zoom gallery. And I am going to, after they have a chance to introduce themselves, tell us about, you know, a little bit about their research, who they're working with, what lab they're working in. And then we'll go through the questions that the audience asked and posted on Slido. I will go through the questions. There's a lot of great questions and I'll try to organize them a little bit so that we're not jumping around too much. But hopefully we'll get to discuss some of the topics that we did not talk about during the faculty panel. And this is also a great opportunity to hear from your peers, your future colleagues. So I'm hoping for a fun panel. All right. So, oh, and one more thing we'll try to go until about 10 minutes to three o'clock, at which point we'll try to split into breakout rooms and get each of our panelists into one of the breakout rooms so that you can chat a little more and maybe answer some of the more specific questions. If that sounds great to everyone, then we can start with Andrew, who happens to be the first in my gallery. Thanks, Nicola. Hi, everyone. My name is Andrew, Andrew McGrath. I'm a fourth year PhD student here at Michigan. I work with Dr. Valeria Bertacco on hardware accelerators for graph analytics. I did my undergrad at Auburn University. I went straight from the undergrad to the PhD program. So for those of you who are in that position on my field help out a little bit. I've done a number of various service roles in the department which people can ask about if they'd like. But I'm glad to be here to answer some of your questions and help you figure out the whole grad school thing. Thank you, Andrew. We have Xiaoying next. Hi, everyone. My name is Xiaoying. I'm also a fourth year PhD student. My advisor is Matt Kay, who is not in the department anymore. I can talk about that too if anyone's interested, like what happens if your advisor moves from, you know, one place to another. But my research is in human-computer interaction, specifically information visualization. I think about questions such as how we can help people make visualizations better and easier and more correctly, that kind of great questions. Yeah, so I'm glad to be here. And this is, I know, third time I'm doing this. So I'm excited to meet you all virtually. Yeah, that's me. Thank you. And now we are just seeing a surge of questions about what happens with an advisor leave in Slido. Kevin. Hello, everyone. My name is Kevin. And I'm actually a first year master's student. This is my first year here in Michigan. And I'm also an international student from Peru, South America, and a Fulbright scholar. So maybe if you have any questions about how international applicants can work their resume or compare to people applying from other parts of the world, I might be able to solve some. And I actually don't have an advisor, but I do hope to keep working in what I do as doing research on the red, which is AI and robotics. Yeah, and nice to meet you all virtually. Thank you, Kevin. Now. Hello, everyone. My name is Nell Escher. I'm a second year PhD student. I did my undergrad at Northwestern in cognitive science. Then I went to law school. And then I did my master's in computer science at Michigan and from my master's went into a PhD program. So happy to talk about any kind of non traditional routes into grad school and wish you all the best during this exciting but sometimes stressful time. Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Sean pool. I'm a first year PhD student working with Professor Jenna wings and my research lies in the intersection of machine learning and healthcare. So I'm particularly interested in applying reinforcement learning techniques to learn the optimal treatment strategies based on the data that are already collected in the hospitals. I did my undergrad at you, Mitch, and then I transitioned into a master program and then now into a PhD program. Yeah, I'm happy to talk about more my experience or anything about research or yeah, really glad to be here. Thank you all and it's great to hear that we have PhD students master students master students who went on to now pursue their PhD degrees that is great. So we have a lot of great questions. A lot of hard questions as well, but I want to I want to give you an easy one, just so that you don't say that you know I don't do the same thing that I did in the faculty panel. And that one is, what do you plan on doing after graduation from your PhD program your master's program whatever program you're currently in. Some of the examples and the questions were professor industry job postdoc, and so on. And normally I would, I would call on some of you. I don't know if the question is particularly relevant, but I would like to open this one for anyone who wants to go first. I can go and start if no one else wants to. Thank you. So, quite frankly, so going into my fourth year you think I would know by now, I don't. I recently done an internship with a company and hardware, and I really enjoyed some elements of that so there's a lot of things about industry that I that I find appealing but I also really enjoy the elements of teaching that I've experienced so far so I, I don't know yet even as a fourth year and I hope you guys know that it's okay to not know even as you're going in. But, yeah, so still trying to figure that out. I have a difficult job on calling on someone else so now. Sure, I also don't have things all figured out yet. But I think academia would be very cool a chance to do more research and especially teaching. But I could also see a lot of different paths kind of laid out ahead. There's a lot of things you can do with a graduate degree in computer science. And so one thing that I'm interested in is is potentially going into the political sphere and helping people create policies around technology. Kevin you are a master's student what about you. Well to be frank I think there are a lot of possibilities like people said, and I think it's okay if you don't know exactly what you want to do. But it also can help to know if there are specific things you want to do. In my case for example, there are three things that I would like to do. I would like to turn back to my country and teach a few classes there because it's a way that I can give back to the country that initiated my education. And I would like to do some work that also highlights why we should consider diversity in our studies in artificial intelligence basically. So I'm not sure when I will do those three things, and then I could do one first or maybe do the three at the same point. Who knows at this point, because of the state of the world because you don't know what you will discover when you are studying when you're working with so many people here. These ideas are out of my mind and I'm sure that I will tackle them at some point. Alright well we have two more panelists who wants to go first. I can go. So, I think I initially entered into the master NKT program thinking that I'd want to be a professor in the future because I really enjoyed teaching, I really enjoyed sharing knowledge and exchange ideas with other people. But I guess I slightly changed my mind a bit. I'm trying to look for an internship to get more of an industry experience to see how that goes as well. Yeah. But I'm also open to teaching focused faculty position if that's possible in the future. Yeah. That leaves you, Cheyenne. All right. Um, so I still haven't made up my mind yet. I just had this conversation with my advisor and I think like doing an internship during the PhD like in industry would kind of help you. I guess refine on your decision. One thing that I learned from my last internship was that it's also possible to teach in internship that that's like I didn't know before I know that there are in industry labs in industry labs that does research, but you can also like teach classes in nearby universities or just like a volunteering activity that you can do so. I mean I don't have my own answers yet, but I'm just sharing this piece of information if you're trying to make up your mind about like industry or academia. Not answering the question really well but that's a great answer because it probably points to, you know, it's it's it's fine to still be thinking about it, figuring it out as you go, changing your mind. And if that's the case with with, you know, PhD student master students already in graduate school, probably it's fine also with applicants as well. So that's that's encouraging to hear. This was kind of an easy question I want to I want to get to some of those harder ones and probably the questions that a lot of applicants have concerns about. So there was a question that says how demanding is the PhD program but I would really open this up more broadly how demanding is is graduate school, you know, both of you, you know, we're doing PhD, those of you who are doing masters right now those who have, you know, done one and are doing the PhD program right now. And then maybe some of the follow up follow ups there as well. You know, do you have time for your personal life. You know, are there any sacrifices that you have to make how are you managing. And maybe we can start. Well, let's start with Andrew, because you you've been in the PhD program for for a little bit now. What are your thoughts. Yeah, so with the fourth year now got three years under my belt here. Yeah, so I have the exact same. That was probably the main question I had when I was going into grad school was how much time I'm going to have to myself here. And I think one thing that I sort of knew logically but didn't really internalize was that everything is much more flexible. Whenever you get to graduate school as opposed to your undergrad or quite frankly sometimes in some capacity your masters. You don't have to take quite as many classes at the same time. And there's not nearly as much of a structure there. So you can organize your time however you want and depending on how you manage your time that can either increase your ability to have a personal life or decrease it. So if you manage your time well and you're able to adapt to the various responsibilities that you have, but the less time constricted elements of those responsibilities, then you'll have plenty of time. So I for myself, I travel about once a month for like a four or five days what not to go see my family or go see my girlfriend or whatnot. I teach one or two well until coven one once or twice a week I teach a dance class and I'm usually dancing like four or five hours out of every week. So, and I still have time to play video games, I will watch movies with friends sometimes now I still get plenty of work done. And there are some days where I was just before deadline where I'm really churning things out and I'm not quite as available and I put in a lot of hours to get that paper out. But if you put yourself in a good position you manage your time well it's absolutely possible to have a really strong personal life just out while you're in graduate school. In my experience. Kevin, you want to contrast that maybe with how it is for you as a master's student. Yeah, of course, something that I would like to also add is that in my case, I spent some time working in the university that I graduated from first, before applying to master degree. So, at first I did have a bit of a shock of how much work I was supposed to do. And this was mostly because I had to spend like three years working so I had forgotten you know the regular rhythm that you get into school that it's doing your courses and making sure you're accomplishing your deadlines and your goals. At first it was a bit difficult. So, but then you get back into that rhythm and you start to realize like Andrew said that you, your power here is that you are much more able to manage your time. So my advice from that would be that you need to prioritize the things that you want because there are a lot of things that we do in our personal lives and not all of them are urgent and not all that are that important. You definitely can give time to those, but you can also decide if it's necessary if I do this thing that I like every week or maybe every couple of weeks. And the other advice I would say is that listen to the people that are already in grad school because at first, especially when you are just accepted and you have that energy, yes, I'm into grad school. I can take on the world. You might be tempted to take a lot of courses or get into a lot of responsibilities that you know you won't be able to accomplish because they are quite time demanding or you are not as super powerful as you thought it might be. And that's okay because part of grad school is also to realize that there are so many things that you can do and you can do them if you organize yourself well. And also, there is something that you will have to say, okay, maybe I will not do this now I will do it later. I will do it when I know more or when I have more time. Those are very good answers. So, any anyone has other perspectives other experiences. For example, you said that now we're going to go ahead, go ahead please. All right. Yeah, I definitely agree with everything that's been said, I think a lot of it is also very dependent on your context and what you're coming into grad school, needing to know and the responsibilities that you take on. I actually had a harder time when I entered the master's program because I didn't have an undergraduate degree in computer science and so I was doing a lot of work on the side to catch up, while also working as a GSI. So if you haven't heard about it yet, being a graduate student instructor is a very cool thing that you can do at Michigan where you can teach and it pays your tuition and pays your money. You're a stipend and is a pretty nice option for for getting through grad school but it is, you know, about 20 hours a week, 20 hours a week of work on top of your studies. And so I felt, you know, when I was in that situation, I had a harder time managing my personal life and my schedule. And then now in the PhD program, I think a lot of times, how much of a personal life you have is a little dependent on lab culture. And I think that's kind of specific to the PhD program. It's the expectations that your advisor puts on you as well as what your peers around you are doing, I think is a lot of times informing what kind of personal life you get to create and carve out for yourself. I'm in a supportive environment. So it's nice. Go ahead. I see you unmuted yourself. You have, you have experiences with what three different programs at Michigan. Is that true? Yeah, that's right. So I do want to say the transition for me is kind of more gradual. So I because I started with the undergrad program at UMish. Everything is very structured. I just have to pick the courses I take and satisfy all the requirements and the courses, you know, all the assignments you do them and the projects. So everything's very structured and then I enter into the master program. So I'm taking courses while starting to do research, and also teach as a GSI. So there I'm starting to feel a bit of more of a need to manage my time well or many of my time better to balance the courses I take, the research and the teaching job that I need to do as well as my personal life. And starting I guess this semester particularly I'm not taking any more courses now so my entire time is now focused on like entire work time is focused on research now so I do feel more of a need to like manage my time well and leave time for my like personal leisure as well. So, but I do want to say, I do still have a personal life so I play a lot of video games and I go hiking a lot and like take walks and go to the gym, etc. Yeah, but I think the the graduate transition taught me how to like learn to manage my time better. Anything that you would like to add about your own experiences. I do want to echo that like everyone everyone's talking about how like in PhD program like your time is less structured compared to undergrad or even masters. So like one solution that I found was to take music lessons. And in my background here this is on the Bell towers on campus there's an instrument in there where you can play. So, like my chance in circumstances I started taking this bow playing lesson. And by doing that it gives me like a kind of rhythm like I will still have homework to do like things to practice and have commitment of like turning in homework and so on. And it's like a nice way of introducing some structure and accountability like more immediate than say like a paper deadline so that's kind of my personal life now and I think it's a great way to like add structure to your time and you know have a bit of fun while doing the PhD. So follow up on that and ask how different is it now that we, you know, we're dealing with coronavirus right. Yeah, how different is it now then then how it was before I mean obviously there's, there's all these additional stresses right. Oh, is that a question from you. Sure, of course. I don't know about your specific like I've just been staying home and doing my work. And since my advisors not here anyways, he moved to Northwestern. So, like it doesn't impact me as much just research wise. But that's just my personal experience and I've definitely had a covid scare as well and my throat is hurting that kind of stuff. But yeah, maybe others can add their own experience. And so I can follow up in this case. In my particular case I am still in my home country so I am taking all of my courses right now virtually. So it's not something that you expect and it was kind of like a funny thing because the day after I got my acceptance letter was the day we as a country enters into lockdown. So it was a bit of a bummer. And it also like puts you in perspective like how social learning is because yes. When you are in grad school and you're focusing in your own courses and your own research, it can be a little isolating because you will only meet your classmates or your lab partners and not many more people. But now I understand you realize that there is a power in learning when you are sharing a space with other people because it's it takes you from just learning from a course or reading a book. Or doing some programming exercises on your own to a community experience that you can talk about and discuss or even just like complaining about I don't understand anything at all. I need to study more because that also helps you build a how you can communicate about this fence with other people. So that's actually an added difficulty now that I don't think much people were expecting because I think technology know that yes that we can do a lot of things virtually and there is a lot of progress we can do one. While we are not in the same room with the things that we're working on, but often we don't think about this like social challenges that sometimes are added into our experiences. Yeah, sure. So for me, things are things definitely feels different. So I'm an international student from China so I, I guess for the past few months I talked to my parents more because I can't go home, and they're really far away they can't come here and either. But the other thing that it's important to me is because usually when I work in the office, I have all the lab mates around me, but when I work at home it's just me and my desk and my bed so it feels kind of different. So one thing we did was everyone in our lab just joined the zoom call and do our work there. So that like keeps the feeling of being around people there. And that the other thing would be to occasionally hang out with a few friends to talk about live or research or academic or anything. I think that's been helping me a lot. All right, so there is one popular question. So this is going to be a complete detour from what we've been talking about just now there's a popular question that a lot of people wanted to know about. And I think it's interesting to ask you as well because when we asked similar questions in the faculty panel. It kind of brushed over as not really important. And I know, you know, you're not making decisions about admissions necessarily, but you are data points. So I want to ask you as well. So it says here, how important is GPA in the admission process, if you're applying straight from the undergrad but I would like to expand it in general how important is GPA. And I again, I understand you're not necessarily making the admissions decisions here. But I want to hear about your perspectives and maybe even if you're willing to share your experiences. Maybe we're in a similar situation stressing out over something like a GPA. Now, I don't want to call anyone in particular but Andrew made made my life easier and I'm sure. Sure. Yeah, so I, I've got some, I guess, interesting experiences with this. So when I first of all, I was the undergrad undergrad to the PhD. And for some context, my pre college experience was very liberal arts. I didn't have lots of I didn't really have any math and science before I got to college. So I had an okay, I had a 37 when I exited the exit to grad school, which is a good GPA. I was very happy with it. But I had a is and all the wrong things I had a is in English I had a is in my, I had for like my math, I typically would get a C in math. And my upper level engineering courses were, they were good. They were a mix of A's and B's which I was very proud of, but they certainly didn't compare to some of the people I was around. On top of that I had a number of other problems with my application. And so, for me, I had a pretty good GPA all things considered, but I think what's way more important than the GPA is why you got that GPA and explaining a little bit more in your essays, some context behind that number. Okay, some people get a 4.0. Okay, that's fantastic. Some people don't have to work to get that 4.0. And if you didn't have to work through undergrad to get that 4.0, then you are unprepared for PhD. That sounds blunt, but really one of the key things about the PhD is the perseverance and the pushing through difficult problems, difficult challenges. And so if you got a 4.0 because you worked your butt off, and you learn to study you learn to work through and push through challenges. That's awesome. If you got a 3.2, maybe that's a little bit on the low side but if you got a, oh yeah, maybe if you got a low GPA, but one of the reasons because you overcame all of these extra challenges and you still were able to get up to a 3.2. That's also great. I don't think that that eliminates you from the process at all. I think what's way more important is the story behind the number and not just the number itself. Does anyone else have a take on this? Maybe even if you want to look at it from the perspective of masters, both now and Kevin you, well, oh sorry. Yeah, no, I totally agree with what Andrew has said. So I think GPA is like a, you can you can see it as a reflection of your attitude towards anything or towards like learning. If you can get a pretty good GPA that shows that you're really serious about what you're doing and it sort of reflects on your potential to do serious research. But having said that, I also agree with what Andrew had said, which is if you overcame all these challenges to get like a 3.2, I think that's also worth mentioning in your essay. But the other thing I heard, correct me if I'm wrong, is the difference between the masters and the PhD program. So I believe for PhD admissions, they're looking more for your research potential. So as long as you don't have like a terrible GPA, then you should be fine. But if you're looking forward to apply for a more like non-research focused master's program, I think the GPA is slightly has a slightly higher weight. Yeah. So I actually initially I plan to just apply straight to the PhD program from undergrad, but that didn't get me in because at that time I didn't have any much research experience. So I joined the master's program and there I got more research experience and that I think helped me with getting to the PhD program here. Yeah, I saw all kind of volunteers some information. I had a pretty trash GPA for undergrad. And that didn't really hamper me in any way I think I'm probably don't worry too much about the numbers. There's also the GRE that's going to just put some numbers on your application. But I don't think that these numbers will filter you out. You're still going to have a chance at getting in and they definitely don't reflect like your potential in graduate studies. If you do need to include like, you know, here's why this isn't as high as like targets that may be published, that's fine, but definitely don't let any low numbers discourage you from applying. So just to again, point out this year, we're not even asking for the GREs. So hopefully we are moving towards less kind of quantitative evaluation that way. Alright, so I actually, I don't want to dismiss the issue of GPA because I know, you know, a lot of students are asking about it and maybe just the system itself is adding some stress by putting some numbers next to the application or on the application web page. But I do want to talk about some of the other things that are perhaps important. So I would like to move away from GPA and ask about some of the more practical side of things have been PhD. So there is a question here that says, what are the PhD stipends like? And it looks like whoever asked the question is satisfied with an approximate range. And what about the cost of living in an arbor area, rent, commuting, all of those kinds of things. And again, I don't have anyone in particular to call on. So, who would like to go on go first about this one this affects everyone. Well, I can just talk about numbers, I guess. I mean, I had assumed that we all receive like the same stipend for the PhD students, right? This is a time to find out. Are you, are you guys paid more than I do. Yeah, so I guess like after tax, it's a bit more than $2,000 per month. And that's, that's actually a livable amount in another. And just since I started the PhD program, I've been like thinking about personal finance and everything and try to like make a budget and portion the money. This much I want to spend on rent and this much I want to spend on food and transportation and all that. So that's some, some thoughts about that. The, a bit over 2000 stipend is definitely doable in number, but you're not going to. It depends on your living standards and like what kind of compromises you want to make. Just in terms of rent, I think you can get somewhere to stay anywhere from maybe $500 to $2,000 per month. So like how you want your living environment to be do you want to share an apartment with someone you want to live alone, like those decisions will affect how much money you can spend on rent. And parking is not free on campus. So take the bus. What else, maybe someone else can jump in. Maybe if you don't mind, you know, sharing actual personal experiences, you know, telling us where do you live and how much, you know, do you pay. And of course, you know, there's there's no shame in sharing these kinds of things, especially how much you're making because one of my own students in discussions about how much they were making realize that there was a there was an HR error or accounting error for a long time. So talk about these things. Yeah, yeah, make sure. Yeah, it's definitely doable. And I think I follow that's like, there's a rule for that like 50 30 20 rule for like budgeting, like you put your 50 50% of your money into like rent and food and all the necessities. And I'm able to do that, like following those financial advice and I recently discovered that there's like a retirement account you can contribute to as a PhD students that didn't know before. So I'm doing that also. I guess it was taught me a lot in terms of money but yeah I think the stipend is livable not going to live too comfortably but it's doable. Is there anyone who maybe lives in student housing. I know that's maybe less common for graduate students any other accommodations that you have. So I'm going to share and give some examples if you don't mind, of course. Yeah, I can jump in some of my experiences I was actually just pulling up my bank account right now. So we can see exactly how much I was getting each month so after tax I'm getting about 2400 a month, just a little bit over. Now I think that number varies in terms of how much you're actually getting into your bank account because of taxes and whatnot. I don't think I get hardly anything at, you know, during tax time or whatever but that's beside the point. But not student housing. It's about 15 minute walk from my building, which is on North Campus. I pay I live with a roommate it would pay about 1500 a month, so I pay about 750. And by the fact that I live so close to campus I usually walk to campus which for some context I'm from Florida and I live in Michigan, and I'm still able to handle that walk so if that's something that is concerning to anyone. It's a custom to 100 degree weather. When it gets down below if you have the right jackets you're going to be just fine I promise. Otherwise, yeah, and this is this type of things going to vary business I mentioned that I travel about once a month and when I travel I mean flying so I have enough to cover all my expenses. I go do these these trips about once a month or so. I admit that dancing sometimes cost some money because I'll travel for dance. And even with with all those expenses with this stipend I don't really worry too much about how much I'm going to spend if I go out to eat with someone. So the group of people are going to go go watch the movies or something. You know pre COVID. I don't worry too much about how much is going to cost an individual instances I do a lot on a given month that I'll watch out but it's enough. I'd say in this environment. The second is definitely enough to not have money be at the forefront of my mind whenever I'm doing my day to day activities. But I do want to sort of commend the way that the two parts of this question whenever you're looking at whatever grad school looking at both how much someone makes and what the cost of building is those are both very important. Not to not to point any fingers but there are there's a particular state out way out in the West, maybe even the most West of the US that maybe maybe that balance is a little bit different so please keep asking that question of whoever you're looking at you're working with. Yeah, also save that the PhD stipend is quite a bit higher than what you would receive working as a GSI which might be your for master students like your main source of funding. There is some disparity in those numbers. So, for reference when I was working as a GSI I made about $20,000 a year from that position. I think it's probably gone up a few thousand dollars in that. And those since that time. But I make about 10 grand more per year as a PhD student, which is cool. I, you know, still pretty poor though. The cost of living is much more reasonable here than in like a lot of large cities. So that's nice. I lived everywhere from, you know, a med school fraternity, you know $400 a month to my current position which is like, you know, six roommates that I pay $600 a month. So there's definitely ways that you can kind of like make a grad student budget work. But yeah, I guess like keep in mind I guess the that masters students your experiences might be a little bit different than PhD students. Unless others would, you know, want to chime in a little bit here. There is another topic that I would like to like us to have enough time to talk about we did the same thing for the faculty panel. We left some time at the end. Not again, not because it's not important. It's a very important issue, but I just wanted to make sure that we have the time to talk about it. We talked a little bit in the in the faculty panel about the I diversity, equity and inclusion challenges and issues and I want to bring this up to this panel as well. There's one question in particular that I think is a good starting point. So it says, how does you make sure that people from marginalized backgrounds in terms of race gender disability and sexuality feel supported and welcomed, but anyone on the spot. But I will be happy to get some volunteers. I know I start mostly so I'll try to keep my answer short here. I was actually just talking to someone about this a couple of days ago, someone who was also an undergrad talking about their possibility of going into their graduate program. And with Michigan in particular, okay, so I admit I don't actually know a whole lot about outside of our department time. My, my focus has really been kept within the department so I'm afraid I don't have a lot of experience outside of that. I was just talking, they, one of the things that they were describing is that they're very interested in getting involved in that kind of thing and I know that the student organization that is made up it's called CSEG which is the the computer science and engineering graduate student group, if you will, has recently just started a DEI sort of committee there's a there's a name for it and I've forgotten I'm embarrassed to say I forgot what the name is but it exists. So this is actually kind of a really great time if that's what you're interested in getting involved in as sort of a as a, as a side of your research is because we're starting to do a lot. So, there's, everyone always has a lot of things that they need to improve in terms of departments and colleges and whatnot, but we're starting to get particularly active about this right now. So I'm interested in those kind of policies of those kind of ways of shaping a department to better those sort of experiences. This is actually kind of a really great time to be able to put that kind of experience down and to get started on that kind of thing so that's something that's your passion about. This is a great time for them. Can you bring up something interesting that that is kind of goes along the lines of another question and that is, what are the things that you students are actually involved in currently any kind of whether these are directly related to the issues, but you know, other activities outreach. Are any of you involved in it. Yeah, in my case, I would like to comment. Rockham graduate school has a certificate in the diversity equity and inclusion and I am part of that. And it's basically a series of tons of you address very many various different things about how we can bring diversity equity and inclusion, both to your current career because it's open to all graduate schools here in Michigan, and both into interactions between different different like environments like you know workplace or academia or research depending on what you are more interested into. And I think that on top of this there's also like a lot of the student organizations that also deal with particular issues and different communities that are students of color of rockham there are society for Hispanic students there is there is the spectrum center who has some organizations also for LGBTQ students in different areas here at the university of Michigan. And the thing that would also add is that I don't think that there is like this goal of diversity and equity that people think that once we reach that things will be okay. There will always be things that we can work on the trees that we can get better at because we have to counter years and years of history of this things being an issue. So I think that since we have so many initiatives bought from our program and for graduate school and in general from the university that we are in the right mindset that we need to keep learning and keep to educating ourselves, both in our own identities and the identities of other people have. That's a really fabulous answer. So, I will say our department like probably every other computer science department like has problems with these issues like just being honest like, you know, you can look at the makeup of our faculty and our students and you can see like, there is work that needs to be done. And I think a lot of people are growing an awareness of this. I think a lot more people are recognizing that this is a problem. This isn't just did like the shake out of like some sort of meritocracy like people are having these discussions at Michigan and we have some really awesome allies and like with the faculty who are who are really like digging into these issues with us. There are some who are not so not so understanding, but like the more vocal segment is towards more positively integrating conversations around diversity equity inclusion and not just like you know outside of like schooling but like like in courses and like integrating that into like the full experience of being a graduate student. So, quite recently, like I was able to secure funding for a Tech and Society reading group with someone else in, you know, in my lab, and that's great we're going to be reading like, you know, it's a series of books that like deal with these issues. And I know that like there's so Excel is this women and other and others group in CSC they had a very awesome book club this last summer that read racing technology. And so, like a lot of good conversations coming from that. Yeah, so there's so much work that needs to be done but I think like, we're not too shy about talking about those issues here. I mean, and now for bringing this up because I think, you know, we shouldn't, we shouldn't confuse the desire to meet the change with, you know, saying that oh, well everything is fine. And as long as we don't, we have the opportunity to talk about these issues and try to solve them. But I also really like Kevin's point that, you know, there's never, there's never such a thing as it's now sold. Let's, let's move on. These are the things that we constantly have to work on. So this was, this was great to hear. And I also, you know, would like to let others, you know, chime in if there's something that they would like to add. Right. Well, it is 250. But this would have been the time to stop. But there is one last question that I wanted to ask, just give everyone an opportunity to answer. I know that there's so many great questions here that we just don't have the time to touch on all of them. Everything from, you know, different experiences before graduate school and so on. But there's one thing that I think it's very, very important in these early stages of the application and just after you get the application. And that is choosing your advisor. And I just want to ask you how did you actually choose your advisor? I don't want us to skip on that important question. You know, sharing you brought up, you know, your advisor a couple of times. So you want to go first? How did you make the choice and how are you dealing with the challenges that you brought up? Oh, yeah. So I guess I chose my advisor because he admitted me. Okay, so like when I was applying, I was like browsing through like the faculty listing at Michigan and I thought, wow, this person does interesting stuff. And on the same my statement of purpose that oh, I want to work for this person and apparently I guess during interview, like there would be like interviews in January and February during the interviews and I just found that we had like shared you know, communicating science with visualization that kind of you should interest. So I just stuck with like advisor like for three years now so and I guess just during last semester, my advisor moved from Michigan to Northwestern. So that's a bit of a, it's not that bit of a transition to me, I guess I'm still like advised by my advisor is just that I needed to find an academic advisor here in Michigan and I did it sort of last minute. But the department was helpful and I was like brought up during the faculty meeting and eventually I got a new academic advisor on paper so that I can continue in my program. Yeah, so that was like my advisor story and I know if there's any follow up questions or people want to know her. I think we will actually unmute it yourself and I was going to ask because I was actually curious how your trajectory maybe change your advisor search. Yeah, so I think my experience is kind of unique because I get to know my advisor as an undergraduate student. So I was taking this course introduction to machine learning and I was one of the first, like upper level, like computer science courses that I took. And then I really got into the topic of machine learning and really because my advisor Professor Janet Williams she was really passionate and if you ask that when she teaches and so I decided to like to teach as a, like a TA for her and then started doing research, and then I just kept working with her. Ever since my undergrad and to the master's and the PhD program. So there wasn't any like official interview process afterwards. Unlike many other people would do when they applied to a new school and search for an advisor, but I do think it's the like we like through the years of working together we know each other better. And yeah, there wasn't necessary for another interview because we know what each other is doing and what we're enthusiastic about the same things. Now I'm very curious about your story. Alright, Nicholas my advisor so I have to give you guys the kind version of what happened. Now I was doing research in a different lab in the in the department and it wasn't a great fit for me. To be honest, the lab culture was not a great fit for my desires and my lifestyle but I took a class with Nicola and he really encouraged me while I was completing the final project for his course and kind of from there like recognizing that he was like encouraging me to pursue my own interests and we had a nice coincidence of coincidence of political beliefs and other other interests. I felt very comfortable working with him and when it came time to turn in the application and use my topic for advisor. Now Kevin I don't know if you're involved in research or not but I'm also curious from maybe perspectives of either your own or other master's students. How does that work, finding somebody to work with when there isn't really a research advisor. Well yeah and my experience here is that at some point in the master's assignment to like a common advisor at the group of advisors and you go to them and they are technically the people that you go to for questions or if you were interested in things. But also like my experience was a bit more particular because as I mentioned I am a full bright scholar so I had to contact some professors here also admits again. And what am I experienced that I really really enjoyed was that Jews writing emails to people that you're interested with, even if they don't answer because I did have some answers and they have people that didn't answer to me. That also helps you like realize more or less what do you want to work on and like currently the semester I am not doing active research, but I am already planning like who I want to talk with when the next semester begins or you know when we are in the middle of the break between semesters and what ideas we might have for you know for doing some research or for collaborating in a project you know. And I think that in either way a lot of what would make your relationship with anyone you're working with but I think especially with your advisor is that you also show some initiative and say this is the thing that interests me and this is the thing that I want to work with. And, you know, that's the way where you find it the other people have same interests that they can guide you, and maybe they can, hey, I don't particularly work on this but this person does, you know, and that that's also like a helpful thing to take into account sometimes. Andrew you want to be the last answer for this panel. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, just so that it said, the choice of your advisor is probably the single most important part of the whole graduate student application and acceptance experience. I actually read a paper a couple years ago that said, your relationship with your advisor is the most important determining factor for your success in graduate school. And I think the way that they phrased it in the paper in their study was, does the advisor actually have your back. And I think they put it in different words but I sort of generalized there. And now that I'm actually going into my fourth year I absolutely agree with that. Now, not just it's really hard to really know these advisors before you pick them right and so, you know, it's that sounds terrifying from your perspective and I absolutely get that. One thing that you should know is that it's really not a big deal if you change advisors. There's not a big stigma to it. I've had a number of friends who have either had a different advisor or has the same advisor that I have the relationship just didn't work. They found a different advisor and that was totally fine it didn't involve a big fight, but there wasn't any hard feelings that's a natural part of this process. And I think it's really important to be in a program that allows for that transition to happen. Whenever I talk to people about picking an advisor I always just say there's three things you want to have that connects with them. The first one being how comfortable are you with your advisor. Are you able to engage with your advisor in an uncomfortable topic. Is the data not at all showing you what you thought it would show you do you need to take a break for some person like a week break for some personal reason, are you able to have these difficult conversations. What are the other graduate students doing. Are they doing things that you want to be doing. Do you see the recent graduates of this advisor doing the type of things that you want to do. Are they all going into academia and you want to go into industry, maybe that's not quite the right fit. But seeing if there's a connection between what the current students and the graduated students are doing versus what you want to do and make sure those are aligned. And then the last one is basically do you does the advisor have experiences that you want to learn from. So one of the things that was important to me was having an advisor that wasn't exclusively an advisor and a professor but also had other roles in the department and at the university. And so that was one of the things that I wanted to learn from is how they balance all these different things. And so that was important to me and I think that whatever the equivalent is for you, you'll want to look at for that as well. But if you don't listen to anything I say other than this, please devote a lot of effort and thought into what you want an advisor, and making sure that you can find that, but take comfort knowing that if you don't find it right away. There's nothing wrong with going to someone else later on. Thank you so much. This was a really great answers and I think it highlights at least one thing and that is talk to other students, talk to them about their experiences with their advisors and see if that's what you, what you're hoping to have as well. This is great. You know, let's thank our panel. It's it's three o'clock already. I will still split you in breakout rooms and if our panelists have.