Information for Prospective Students

Thank you for your interest in working with me. I am looking for new graduate students (both MSc thesis option and PhD) to join my group. In particular, I'm looking for PhD applicants who have experience in computer vision or machine learning, but interest and enthusiasm for computer vision is most important. SFU accepts applications for both Fall and Spring starting dates and I am always looking for new students.

If you are a new/prospective student, and you are interested in working with me on a research project please read the following.

If you are a prospective graduate student and you have some prior background in computer vision (papers, projects, courses etc.) then please see my homepaged and the Vision and Media Lab for a list of my recent research projects to get an idea of what I'm interested in.

I like to maintain a moderate sized group of students with whom I work closely, meeting at least weekly to discuss research. As my student we would work together on interesting projects, publish papers in top conferences (e.g. CVPR/ICCV), you would travel to them to present our work, and receive RA funding while doing all of this. Basically, it's being free to work on projects you find exciting and getting paid to do so -- life as a grad student is pretty nice!

A rule of thumb about what I expect in terms of thesis content -- an MSc thesis is one conference paper, and the student should strive to make this into a journal paper as well. A PhD thesis is at least three conference papers, in addition to related workshop and journal papers. MSc students should expect to complete their degrees in 1.5 years, PhD students in 3-4 years. For those who are familiar with the US system, direct entry into the PhD program from BSc is atypical in Canada -- a MSc is required. Students with a BSc would apply to the MSc program, and are encouraged to continue their work towards a PhD upon completion of the MSc. Note that our MSc thesis students do research and receive full RA/TA funding, unlike many programs in the US.

Information on funding is available from the SFU CS Graduate Program. All MSc thesis and PhD students receive full funding. We will match competing offers from other schools. In addition, my lab often has industry collaboration including internships.

I receive a large volume of email from prospective students. Some answers to common questions are below.

• If you are considering SFU's graduate program as a MSc or PhD student, I encourage you to apply. However I don't make admission decisions. They are made by the admissions committee. Please apply directly to the university and the department (follow directions on our Graduate Admissions page). Please don't contact me directly about admissions questions: I will ignore such emails.
• The current SFU CS Grad Admission application form requires you to provide a potential supervisor. You do not need my permission to select my name as a potential supervisor.
• If you are looking for a summer internship position as a graduate student, and you are not a Canadian resident, then I will not be able to accomodate your request.