 We are always
looking for new self-motivated undergraduate and graduate students
to join our research group. Basically, at a minimum, you'll need
a GPA of 3.3 or higher and have good C, C++, and UNIX programming
skills. It is not necessary that you have experience in "image
processing", or "computer vision", but you must have
an eagerness to want to learn more. We would expect you to read the articles and ask us questions about things you don't understand. If you were still interested after all that, then we'd sit down and plan out a project with you. A few weeks after that, we would have you give a very informal talk to the research group on one of the papers you had read, and what you expected to accomplish in your project. At this point you would also turn in a 1-2 page abstract and summary of literature related to your project. Then, you'd work on your project for the rest of semester (or academic year), reporting results at the research meeting when appropriate. At the end of the semester, you would be expected to write a 10-15 page report on your project and give an oral presentation to the research group summarizing your progress and findings. After your final oral presentation, you would also be asked to demonstrate any code you developed to the group. Your code would be expected to be well-documented, so the next set of students could build upon it. All this probably sounds a little intimidating, and, yes, it is a lot of work too, so it's not for everyone. But trust us, when you get into it, it can be a lot of fun. It can make many of the classes that you sort of skirted through start to make sense, and it can help integrate the sometimes fragmented concepts you've been learning about in computer science and engineering. Check out the summary of Student Research Projects WWW page, and ask them what they thought of it. While working with us, you might be able to get independent study credit for your work. You might even get paid (depends on the current funding situation). Depending on how hard you work and how much you like the project, you might be able to culminate your efforts in a journal publication or a presentation at a local or national conference. If you're a graduate student, you could certainly do a Master's level thesis in one of these areas, and then, if you wanted, apply to our Ph.D. program in Computer Science and Engineering. So think about it. It can open a lot of doors !! |