Prospective Graduate Students (working with Tor Aamodt)

I have two PhD RA openings for September 2012 admission (exceptional applicants for MASc may also be considered for these positions).

UBC is a great place to go for graduate study. To learn more about UBC you may want to see the following virtual tour. More information for potential applicants is provided below (note other professors in UBC ECE may have different requirements).

Graduate level study is very different from an undergraduate education in that one must discover new knowledge and this requires tackling questions for which nobody knows the correct answer. Consequently, graduate school is even more challenging than getting good grades during an undergrad program. This is true in general and no different for students in my research group.

Graduate students in my group routinely publish in the most selective conferences in our field and are highly sought after by industry: Students in my group have interned at Intel's Microarchitecture Research Lab and the compute architecture team (responsible for CUDA) at NVIDIA. Recent graduates have been hired full time by NVIDIA. You can find more information about recent research done in my group on my publications page and/or the following high level introduction. Briefly, a computer architect must coordinate design trade-offs at many levels of abstraction from the device level all the way up to software. Research in this area typically involves discovering new hardware organizations that improve performance per unit cost or introducing new features that make the system better in some way (e.g., easier to program).

All applicants must meet the UBC Faculty of Graduate Studies and ECE department minimum requirements outlined here before they can be considered for admission. Historically, students accepted to my group have averages well above UBC/ECE minimum requirements. See these instructions for details on how to apply to our department. When selecting graduate students I look for two things: (1) talent and (2) knowledge and skills. Specific talents that lead to success in my group include (but are not limited to): intellectual ability (e.g., ability to solve novel problems), inquisitiveness, creativity, initiative, a strong competitive drive, discipline, and the courage to work on new (and/or hard) problems with no known solution (that is what research is for). Your application statement should demonstrate you possess these talents. Skills and background knowledge required to do well include both a strong hardware background and/or a strong software background (preferably both). Relevant experience applying these skills in practical settings should be highlighted in your application. This could be experience you have accumulated through course projects, prior work experience, or as a hobby. Strong language skills are required since research involves reading research papers, discussing ideas with your supervisor and other students, writing up research results and presenting those results. This means you must meet UBC standards for language proficiency outlined in the minimum requirements. In addition, PhD applicants are expected to have a demonstrated research track record (i.e., prior publications). If you are a UBC ECE undergraduate student interested in graduate research in my group it is recommended you take EECE 476 (Computer Architecture).

Note that for historical reasons most Canadian universities (including UBC) require applicants without a research based masters degree to apply for and enter the MASc program even if their eventual goal is to get a PhD. In our department it is possible to transfer to the PhD program from the MASc program by defending a PhD thesis proposal, but the more usual route is to first complete the MASc degree and then apply to the PhD program.

Note that you must apply directly to UBC as outlined above. Since I receive many requests for information it is not possible for me to reply to all of them. Admission decisions are made after the application deadline (typically late January through early April for September admissions). Whether or not you end up in my group, thanks for stopping by and good luck in your future endeavors.