current students

Group photo: (l-r) Joe, Anil, Chris, Jake, Xue, Jon, Andrew. Not shown: John, Bling.

• Graduate
  • Jon Bronson:
  • Jacob Hofman:
  • John Landers:
  • Xuejing Li:
  • Andrew Mugler:
  • Anil Raj:

 former students

• Graduate
  • Manuel Middendorf: applications of learning theory in genetic network inference; supported by NSF (ECS and VIGRE)
  • Etay Ziv: systematic identification of network features; modularity, inclduing applications to graph drawing
• Undergraduate
  • Lawrence David: network inference via time-series analysis; supported by Goldwater Fellowship
  • Maggie Johnson: Information Theoretic approeaches to graph clustering
  • Robin Koytcheff: systematic identification of network features; modularity, inclduing applications to graph drawing; supported by NSF (VIGRE)
  • Sara Nichols: simulation of synthetic genetic networks
  • Alex Rikun: optimal stopping times for non-vanilla options
• High School
  • Pat Bennett : computational study of microfluidic mixing; Intel Semifinalist

 opportunities for students

• Undergraduate students who have not yet applied to Columbia for graduate study and would like to know if I will accept them as an advisee should look at my FAQ.
• Research opportunities: Undergraduate research projects are often computational. For that reason it is a very good idea to make friends with tools for scientific programming. For example, all I do I do in MATLAB. Matlab is available on Unix workstations operated by AcIS, including those in the Engineering Terrace on the 2nd floor of Mudd. All Engineering undergraduate students have access to this lab. Graduate students and others can only use these machines after upgrading their basic AcIS account to an 'extended' account for $35 per semester. Alternatively, Matlab is available in a 'student edition' for Windows and Macintosh, published by Prentice Hall and available through the Columbia Bookstore for around $100. Be sure to get version 6.x or later(release 12 or later); version 7 (release 14) is now available. If you're interested in research, you might consider taking some time to make friends with MATLAB. For example:

  Write two matlab-readable (a.k.a. ".m") files, one of which generates a string of random numbers, the other of which reads those numbers, sorts them, and plots them.

  You might want to see this local link for more goodies. It is also nice to know tools for getting around UNIX, like perl, CVS, and such. CVS has many tutorial sites available, including this collection, this, this, and this. One way to make friends with MATLAB is to take a course (1 point, lasts a third of the term (starting january)) from our CS department:

  Spring 2006 Computer Science W3101 section 001 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES; PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES:(MATLAB); 1 point; Instructor: Paul Blaer; Wednesday 11:00am-1:00pm 233 Seeley W. Mudd Building; Computer Science Department

  There are many many online tutorials. Start with these links:
  1. official mathworks matlab tutorial
  2. mathworks
  3. UCR
• Research programs
  • LANL summer programs
• Postdoc Fellowships
  • bioinformatics; due april 12
  • HSFP
  • others
• Student Fellowships
  • Sloan Research Fellowships
  • lucent
  • General NSF student page
  • NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
  • Homeland Security Fellowships
  • Krell Fellowships
  • NSF GRFP
  • sloan
  • undergraduates abroad
  • burroughs wellcome fund
  • NAS's links
  • science.gov's links
  • someone else's links
• res corp
• Columbia's Career Center
• NAS fellows

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   NSF tips

  • How to write a `final report' for NSF (.tex) (.pdf)

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   Rec tips

  If you want me to write a letter of rec, I'll need to know
  • recipient of letter.
  • audience of letter
  • deadline for letter
  • desired topics to be covered in the letter
  A recent trend has been for schools to require "letter writers" to go through a point-and-click system, which can be quite time consuming. Please let me know which schools want an email and which want me to go through an e-labyrinth.

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   3900 tips

  If you want to take 3900 with me, we need to come to a contract, and this contract needs to be closed before the start of the semester. The contract will stipulate
• Who is the scientific advisor (if not me)
• What is the deliverable (e.g., technical report, oral report)
• Deadline for the deliverable
• How often will you update me on progress of the research and in what form
• How many points of credit will be awarded
  The scientific advisor, me, and you must all come to agreement on the contract, and the scientific advisor must agree to email me a review of your work by a deadline stated in the contract.