A few notes for students.
High school students
I do occasionally take exceptional high school students into my lab over
the summer. Students need to be highly self-motivated and independent,
and have good math and/or programming skills. Unfortunately, I am usually
not able to fund high school students.
Undergraduates
- If you got an A or A- in my class, I can probably write you a good
recommendation letter. Occassionally, I will write a good letter for a
student who gets a B+ as well.
- I do not submit recommendations using applyyourself.com because I do not
agree with their Terms Of Service. If your school uses this service, you will
need to request a paper version for any of my recommendations.
- I do typically take a student or two each summer for an undergraduate
research project. These students typically have good grades and significant
programming and/or math experience. If you are interested in doing
undergraduate research, you should schedule an appointment to discuss this
with me.
Graduates
Thank you for expressing interest in our ECE graduate program at Boston
University. As I'm sure you can understand, I am regularly swamped with
interest letters from prospective students, and it is very difficult for me to answer
all of them, much less provide assessment of the likelihood of acceptance.
For most cases, the best situation is to simply apply to our program so
that I can view your application in context of other applications in
the given year.
In general, my research focuses on networking and security, using
fundamental tools from algorithms, error-correcting codes, number theory
and the like. I currently have projects on data synchronization,
harsh-environment localization, over-the-air programming of sensor
networks, and security of smartphones, although new projects come up
all the time. You are welcome to
peruse my web site (you're currently viewint it -
http://people.bu.edu/trachten)
or my lab web site (http://nislab.bu.edu) to see the kind of work that
I am doing.
Though my lab does have openings for incoming graduate students, these
positions are typically extremely competitive. Things that I look for in my
assessments include:
- Good grades from a good school, especially in classes relevant to my
research or advanced fundamental math classes.
- Publications in English-language journals, esp. top-rated IEEE or ACM
journals.
- Interesting and intelligible ideas for future directions related to my
research.
Please feel free to contact me if you have
specific thoughts on these
matters. In any event, I wish you the best of luck in your graduate search.
Post-doctoral researchers
It is very rare for me to take post-docs into my lab. Acceptable candidates
must have an extraordinarily strong research record in their PhDs, with
relevance to my interests.