IC Doctoral School welcomes new Fellowship candidates
49 Doctoral Fellowship candidates from 25 countries came to IC School for two intense days of introduction to the school’s research activities. The candidate students are among a group of selected few to gain a firsthand overview of the exciting doctoral program.
The IC Doctoral School Open House welcomes each year selected prospective graduate school candidates to visit the school and meet with current students, alumni, and faculty members. This year saw a record of 550 applications to the doctoral program during its first application round - a 20-percent increase compared to 2016, highlighting the success of the school among prospective students.
Prof. Michael Kapralov, Chair of the Open House, welcomed the participants, followed by Professors Bryan Ford, Mark Pauly, Carmela Troncoso, Rüdiger Urbanke, Martin Jaggi and Amin Shokrollahi, who presented some of their labs’ flagship projects to an actively engaged audience. Over 200 individual meetings with IC Professors were also organized to provide the students further insight into the specifics of the doctoral program and the research activities of the school.
As it is custom, many of the candidates are courted by and are therefore considering several universities concurrently. Sigrid Hellan, a Fellowship candidate from Norway, is looking at various options in the field of Machine learning and to her surprise, discovered the wealth of the research scope in IC School: “I found it interesting to hear about research activities in the areas of Security and Privacy, which I wasn’t aware existed here.“
Nada Amin, Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) at Cambridge University and an IC PhD alumnus ‘16, talked to the candidates about the opportunities and challenges she faced while conducting her research at EPFL. After finishing her PhD studies in the Programming Methods Laboratory led by Prof. Martin Odersky, she was offered faculty positions in North America and Europe.
Dr. Amin credits the IC Fellowship program’s form as a decisive factor in initially choosing to study at EPFL, as the program allows the students to explore various fields during the first year, before deciding upon a one preferred area of research focus. This flexibility of choice is exceptional among most universities.
“Finding one’s research niche is one of the major challenges,” Dr. Amin highlights. “I would, therefore, encourage the candidates to seek breadth and to explore many fields to build a useful PhD toolkit in view of one’s thesis and what lies beyond. “
“We were very excited to welcome such great candidates at the Open House and hope to see many of them again in September,” Prof. Michael Kapralov concludes.
Should you be interested in the doctoral program in Computer and Communication Sciences, there is still time to apply, as the second round deadline for applications is 15 April. For further information, please visit the doctoral school’s website: https://phd.epfl.ch/edic/application