First of all, a belated Happy New Year to all :)

Some news:

1. The next couple of meetings of the EDIC Committee will be (almost) entirely dedicated to screening future PhD students (for the 2010-2011 academic year). I will try to post some information about the process once admission is over. 

2. Since I'm currently doing an internship away from campus, Mohammad Karzand (who came second in the representative elections last Fall) is replacing me in the meetings until March.

3. The next thing on the agenda would be the Mentoring program, that should go into effect starting next Fall. In brief, every unaffiliated first-year student should be appointed a faculty Mentor that will follow her/his progress during the first year. (Affiliated students automatically have their advisor as Mentor.) As an extra provision, at any time during their PhD, affiliated students may request to be appointed a faculty Mentor (other than their advisor) in order to address some of the difficulties the student may experience (e.g., a dispute with their advisor).

Special credit goes to Mohammad Karzand, who came up with the initial proposal for the program during his tenure as a student rep. I will make the text of the official proposal available once it is done.

A. Rule changes concerning first year students:

1. *Choice of courses*:
Students will be allowed to choose from 4 core courses (2 courses for
Computer Science, 2 for Communication Systems). One of the CS courses
will most probably be Advanced Algorithms; the other will be chosen at a
later faculty meeting (there were indications that it will be a
Systems-area course). One of the Comm. Sys. courses will most probably
be Information Theory and Coding; the other remains to be decided. The
faculty will try to make sure that courses for the same area are not
given in the same semester; however, this is hard to guarantee.
*Note* that these changes will be implemented starting with the next
academic year. On the positive side, it is very probable that the
first-year PhD students failing one of the core courses this semester
will be granted a re-take exam (this is *not* guaranteed).

2. *Candidacy exam*:
The candidacy exam will have a public part (the oral presentation),
which anyone may attend, and a private part where the candidate will
answer questions from the examiners on the presentation and on the
writeup. Most probably, the prospective adviser of the candidate will
not be allowed to give feedback on the presentation and on the writeup
before the candidacy exam. The candidate may, however, consult with
peers and with PhD students/PostDocs from the adviser's lab.

Some of the changes listed (the ones with "most probably") and the
choice of courses need to be validated at the faculty meeting later this
month.

B. Various:

There will be a new course on 3D Computational Geometry in the
summer by Prof. Mark Pauly, who is a new Assistant Professor at EPFL.

Feel free to voice your opinions in the Comments section.

Some relevant issues from the October 8th meeting of the EDIC:

1. The deadline for the annual report for PhD students is now October 31st (instead of March 31st). This will be done starting in 2010 (so no more reports this year).
2. The application deadline for the second round of admissions is now April 15th.
3. Rumor: level 0 of the INM library might be given to PhD students as a meeting place / lounge (the library is moving to the new Learning Centre).

Proposal #1 : Core courses (category : Proposal)

The first proposal concerns increasing the number of "core" courses for first-year PhD students.

As some of you might know, first-year PhD students have to choose from among 3 "core" courses (Advanced Algos, Information Theory, and Dynamical Systems Theory). By the end of the year, they have to pass one of these courses with a >= 5.0 average.  The idea would be to increase the number of such courses to include at least one other "mainstream" course.

This should improve the diversity of the course offering for first year students, allowing first year students to choose a core course more appropriate to their background and research interests.

Status: Will be discussed during the next meeting of the EDIC.

What do you think?

My name is Dan Alistarh and I'm the student representative at EDIC for the 2009-2010 academic year.

This blog has been put up as a way to communicate with you, the students, concerning things the EDIC can do to improve our PhD experience, and the various decisions of the EDIC. Feel free to use it to voice your suggestions and/or grievances. I will also put up brief summaries of the meetings, which should make for good reading :).