Information for Prospective Students

You're here because:

• you clicked the 'Join my team' link on my web page, or
• you contacted expressing interest to work with me.

In either case, thanks for your interest! I am always on the lookout for enthusiastic people to work with.

I am interested in the following topics (in no particular order):

• Adaptive deployment of end-to-end services across heterogeneous infrastructures
• Using ontologies and DSLs to opportunistically compose systems of systems
• Energy-efficient distributed applications
• Cloud brokerage and adaptive decision support
• Intent Driven Networking
• Measuring online systems, such as web infrastructures and social networks

If any of the above is interesting to you, the information below is what you need to know.

Please select the relevant link:  PhD  Masters  L4 Projects  Internships  Guidelines 

PhD Students

Pursuing a PhD demands significant commitment, typically four years of dedicated full-time work. This path particularly benefits those seeking research careers, whether in academia or industry R&D. I encourage you to carefully assess your long-term career goals before making this important decision.

I receive many requests from all over the world. In order to filter these, I look for the following aspects. If these are not clarified, I am inclined to ignore your email.

• Before reaching out, identify the overlap between your interests/experience and mine. Make contact only once you have a clear idea of what you want to work on and why it is relevant to my fields of research.
• Once you know this, send the details in the form of a concise research proposal; no more than 3 pages long. Your proposal should outline what problem you want to work on (research objectives or questions), why it is important (relevance and impact), and how you intend to approach it (planned methodology). This should include the knowledge and skills you will bring to solve the problem.
• Send also a CV that includes degrees and grades, publications, awards of excellence, employment, internships, etc.
• I expect my students to have strong systems programming and data analysis skills, and to publish 2 or more publications during their PhD, with at least one at a top-tier systems venue. Provide evidence in your email demonstrating your ability to meet these standards.
• When emailing me, please send only PDF attachments. I will not open Word documents.
• If I find your proposal interesting and convincing, I will let you know so you can name me as a supporter of your official application using the standard procedure.

Masters Students

• A Masters project in the UK is relatively short but intense. I will meet you frequently for supervision and support. In return, I expect total commitment from your end.
• Before our first meeting, look at my topics of interest at the top of this page and see if there is any overlap with your areas of interest.
• As with all other student projects, I expect my students to be strong system programmers and with good data analysis skills. I also expect them to be creative and have good problem solving skills. Publishing is not a must, but 1 good paper resulting from your work would strongly indicate the importance and quality of your work.
• All notes below on L4 projects also apply.

L4 Project Students

• I expect my students to be confident at coding and data analysis.
• I will meet you frequently to make sure you are on the right path.
• You need to take ownership of your project as it is your work that will be evaluated at the end of it. It is you who needs to define, develop, and defend the project. My job is to guide you through it.
• To give you a good grade I need to see progress and not just an end result. Make sure you show up to meetings and deliver the expected work that we agree upon from one meeting to the next.
• The University gives you access to a number of very rich online digital libraries such as ACM and IEEE. Make use of them! You will need to identify related works as part of your project.
• If your work is of good quality, I will support you in getting it published.

Internships

• There is usually one or more paid internship opportunities available over summer. Please email me to inquire about these, ideally around March. The positions last for 8-12 weeks, and involve significant systems coding and problem solving.
• For paid internships, you need to be physically in the UK. Unfortunately, we cannot help with a visa application if you need one.
• Remote internships are possible, although no pay would be possible for legal and administrative reasons. They are, however, not restricted to the summer. Please email me to inquire, including a CV (in PDF) and a short statement (< 150 words) about what interests you and why this is a worthy subject.