I try to hold office hours regularly; the schedule is on this calendar. Stop by if you want to chat, including about semester papers, Master/Bachelor thesis advising, or other research opportunities.
Students who wish to do a project/paper/thesis in my group are expected to have successfully completed either 401-2684-00L Mathematics of Signals, Networks, and Learning or 401-4944-20L Mathematics of Data Science.
If you are interested in a project/paper/thesis, we have four yearly deadlines, two weeks before the end of each semester and one week before the start of each semester (the ones before the start of a semester are particularly for students doing the MDS or MSNL exams in that same exam session), actual project/paper/thesis takes place during one of the semesters. Almut Roedder (see contact info) is the current contact person, please write him before the deadline. We receive considerably more requests than we have slots available.
You can read through my recent papers to see if my current research interest are a good fit. If so, consider making a list a questions to ask me. You can also check out our group blog Randomstrasse101, and a post with a (somewhat outdated) partial list of possible projects. In most semesters, both MDS and MSNL have a "further topics" exercise session, those are generally excellent inspirations for projects.
Info for Prospective Students
If you are interested in a PhD position in our group, please apply directly to the Zurich Graduate School of Mathematics ZGSM (two deadlines a year). Unfortunately, I am not able to reply to emails enquiring about positions directly.
Sporadically, we may also recruit through the the Center for Learning Systems (CLS), or the ETH AI Center Doctoral Fellowship (ETH AI Center). If you are interested in a position in our group and feel that such a program is a good fit, feel free to apply both to it and the ZGSM.
In any case, feel free to mention me as a potential advisor. You are welcome to also email me to let me know you applied (unfortunately, I cannot reply to all emails I receive; I do however try to reply to every email that ask me specific research questions).
Unfortunately, we have virtually no available bandwidth to host research internships, or supervise thesis, from students not already at ETHZ.
For Postdoctoral and other positions
If you are interested in a Postdoc position in our group, please apply to the Call for Hermann-Weyl-Instructorship and mention me as a potential mentor. Please also email me to let me know you applied and consider, if possible, including a link to a video of a talk you have recently given (unfortunately, I cannot reply to all emails I receive, but I'll take note of it).
(Brief) information for students doing theses or projects in our group
Students doing theses or projects in our group are expected to participate in the DACO seminar and the group meetings, they are generally on Thursdays afternoon. You can find the schedule on this calendar. Try to engage with the group, and to participate in the meetings.
After a student finishes (or is near finishing) her/his thesis or project they are expected to give a presentation in group meeting about their work. For students whose main supervisor is in the group: The duration of the talk is 15min for Semester papers or Bachelor thesis and 20min for Master Thesis. For students whose main supervisor is in another group (usually another department): the presentation is optional, for those cases the duration of the presentation is 10min (I recommend doing a presentation, it is a very good opportunity to practice speaking to an audience).
Advice on presentations: The presentation is short, and remember that giving a short presentation is harder than to give a long one. Rather than aiming to mention everything you did, try to pick your favourite idea, or experiment, or argument and describe it to the audience in a pedagogical way. Imagine yourself in the audience, before having dived deep into your topic, and give a talk that would have taught that ``imaginary you'' something. Success in a talk is measured by how much the audience understands/learns/absorbs, not how much material you include, and many times reducing the amount of material in a presentation increases the amount of material understood by the audience.
