Advising motivated students is one of the most important and interesting parts of being a professor. Every year I receive several emails inquiring about joining my group or the Ph.D. program. Unfortunately, I do not have the time to respond individually to most of these emails. Here is a guide for students who might be interested in working with me. |
If you are not yet admitted to the Ph.D. program: |
At this point, the next step is to
apply to the Ph.D. program. Admittance is done by a committee and not directly by individual faculty members.
So I unable to tell you whether I can or cannot admit you into the program. However, I do recommend that you specify
which professors you have an interest in working with and why in your application statement.
As stated above I will likely not have the opportunity to respond to emails at this stage (and especially not generic emails). There a few exceptions: If you know a colleague of mine (e.g. a professor at your institution that I run into at conferences) and they write and introductory email, I might be more likely to be able to respond. Second, if I happen to be giving a talk at your institution, we could try to arrange a time for us to meet. |
If you are part of to the Ph.D. program at UT: |
I am generally interested in working with new students. If you are potentially interested in working
with me, you can drop by and we can discuss thing further. I suggest that you look over some of my research
publications to get some idea if our interests are likely to overlap.
In almost all cases I strongly recommend that a student takes my graduate cryptography course before (or at least) concurrently to working with me. The course I teach annually is a good method to find out if there is likely a match between us. While the course covers core material, it gives a good flavor of what working in cryptography is about. In addition, the course covers a basic skill set that is needed to do research in cryptography. I expect students that I end up working with to have strong performance in my course. |
Postdocs: |
My ability to mentor postdocs varies from year to year. It is best to check with me individually. |
Internships: |
I generally do not support internships and do not typically support Master's students on GRAs. |