EDIC Student Representative Blog

Hi everyone,

The EDIC meetings in January and February were almost exclusively dedicated to admissions and the Open House, so not much to blog about.

Many thanks to the students participating in the Open House, and enjoy the new Graduate Student Lounge!

Dan

Hi all,

The blog is back from a pause ( there are no EDIC meetings over the summer months ).
A couple of interesting issues came up during the first meeting of this academic year.
 

• Admissions: I'm happy to report that 2009-2010 has been a very good year for the IC department in terms of admissions. There's been a record number of applications, and it looks like our department is (successfully) competing with top-10 US schools in terms of attracting talented undergraduates.
• Mentoring: the mentor program has been in place for a couple of years now, as a way for new PhD students to get help during the first year of PhD.
  The committee would like to urge first-year students to communicate with their appointed mentor during the first semester, especially if they have problems finding an advisor, or adjusting to the course load. Remember, it is the mentor's job to help you.
• Semester projects: during previous years, there have been a couple of unhappy match-ups between students and labs for the semester project. So, if you're a first-year student and you've come to the conclusion that you wouldn't like to continue your semester project in the current lab (or stay there for > 3 more years), please contact the IC school--more precisely, Prof. Ruediger Urbanke--and let him know that you would like to start another project. The main purpose of the project is to match students with labs; if the matchup doesn't work out, it is OK to switch projects during the semester, and the school will do its best to find a new match.
• There's a definite possibility that the IC school will introduce TOEFL as a required exam for admissions starting next year.

That's it for now, please voice your opinion in the comments below.

Have fun,
Dan

The EDIC board needs your help on choosing the poster that will represent the EPFL on notice boards across the world.

Here are the tree finalists, please choose your favorite(s) / thrash the one(s) you hate in the comments section. It will only take a second.

Over the past few weeks, I have been gathering a list of various issues that affect our PhD experience, by talking to some of you. I'm listing the most relevant issues here; please feel free to add your own grievances / solutions either in the comments section, or by emailing me. The goal is to get some of the problems and solutions through the EDIC board in the next board meetings. The list is in no particular order.

1.   The department is somewhat disconnected: students get few opportunities to meet and discuss, or find out about the research going on in other labs.

It is true that the GSA events, the Monday Seminars and the new KTN Seminar are quite useful in this respect, but things could be even better. Two solutions were proposed

• A graduate student lounge, where people could hang out, play games, or discuss research. This could be implemented in the ground floor of the INM library.
• Extending the KTN seminar to students as well (so far only profs are scheduled). This would be a good way for students to advertise their research, and to get feedback from profs and students.

2. The first weeks. Most of you listed their first few weeks at EPFL as the worst part in their PhD, since there's an enormous amount of things to do (new language, look for a place, get an advisor, pick and follow courses, etc etc). The idea here would be for the EDIC to encourage students to come to EPFL at least two weeks (or even more) before they start actual work in the lab or coursework, and to support their coming earlier in some way (small installation grant, advance on the salary).

3. There is no website where students can see all the CS-related courses that they can take in a semester. To begin with, the PhD and Masters' CS courses are hosted on different websites. The math department also offers some CS courses, not listed on the other two (Randomized Algorithms, Optimization etc). There are also CS-related courses in the Management of Technology school (mot.epfl.ch), Mechanics (for Robotics students) and so on. The obvious fix here would be to put these courses on a searchable website.

4. Some courses are missing. For example, there is no Mechanism Design course, the Graph Theory course is offered only in the math department at a Bachelor's level, there is no course to help students learn how to write papers/make presentations ("Problem Solving in CS" has been cancelled), there are no Pedagogics courses, although we are all expected to be TA's at one point or another.   

5. There is no unified schedule of talks/seminars. Some of them (Monday Seminars, System Seminar) are listed on the IC website, but others (e.g. Algo/LMA, the CS talks in the Math Department) are missing.

These are the most relevant issues I noticed myself and by talking to other students. Please feel free to voice your opinions.

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).

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 :).