For Prospective Students

Thank you for your interest in joining my group. Here are some answers to commonly asked questions:

My research group focuses on one of two research areas: Electronic Design Automation (EDA) and on Bio Design Automation (BDA). A student applying to work in my group should have strong interest and academic strength in one or more of the following three areas:

Algorithms: If you know the textbook, Intro to Algorithms book by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein, inside and out, and you are able to apply the concepts when facing a new problem, then you are in good shape.

Biology: If you have taken biology and/or biochemistry in college, then you are in good shape. If you have taken a course in systems biology, synthetic biology, or metabolic engineering then you are in excellent shape. The following three papers might give you a sense of the work that I do in this area: Constructing synthetic pathways to produce biofuels and other biochemical compounds (published in Metabolic Engineering, the premier journal in metabolic engineering), Analyzing modularity in biochemical networks (soon to appear in in PLoS Computational Biology), and using graph-based search to analyze metabolic pathways.

VLSI Design: Ideally, you have taken a VLSI digital design course, and one of: analog circuit design, fabricating technologies, or device physics. The following papers will give you a sense of the problems that I am interested in solving: analyzing TSV-induced noise in 3D circuits, early estimation of TSVs for power/gnd networks, and gate sizing for FinFETs.

It goes without saying, as you are applying to a Computer Science Department, that you have had data structures and have coded a few substantial projects. The department expects you to have breadth in the following areas: Computer Architecture, Programming Languages, Algorithms and Complexity Analysis. If your background is not in Computer Science, then these courses can be made up upon arrival at Tufts.

I receive many requests. If you genuinely want a response, please include the following in your inquiry:

(1)Your research interests, and how they fit within EDA or BDA.

(2) All THREE of your GRE scores: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing. ALL three scores are important to my department when admitting students.

(3) Your university and department and YOUR standing within your graduating class. If you have a master's degree, please state your course work or a short (less than 5 sentences) summary of your thesis.

(4)Your programming experience (language, and lines of codes).

(5)Any publications and research experiences.

The department offers teaching and research assistant ships, but they are competitive. Visit the Tufts CS web site and you can find more information on the "Admissions" tab. Almost all full-time PhD students are supported through fellowships, RAs, or TAs. Also, the department has wonderful fellowships for Female US Citizens.

Why choose Tufts? In the very lively Boston area, the department is small and offers strong mentoring and close interactions between the faculty and students. The faculty are community and research leaders and are strong in several areas including machine learning, computational biology, HCI, visualization and programming languages.

Thank you so much for your interest! Sometimes I just don't have the bandwidth of responding to all inquires. However, if you mention that you read my guidelines on "ProspectiveStudents.html", and you provided all requested information, I am likely to respond.