In my experience seeking graduate (Masters and PhD) admissions, I had to figure out a lot of things the hard way while trying to navigate. I realized even something as fundamental as researching academics and finding potential supervisors can be a daunting task. This is why I thought to break down the steps I took to research potential supervisors in this tutorial.
1. Preliminaries
a. Set down the initial information you need to commence a search including the target country, course of study and research interests. For our tutorial purposes, we choose the following:
Country: Germany
Course: Computer Science
Research interests: Big Data, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, AI, and Cloud Computing
b. Keep a list: Keeping a list of essential information like faculty name, interests, email address and link to page can help you as you go along your research.
2. Google [or-another-browser] search
Find universities offering the course by doing a Google search.
There are some websites that might give you a list of the universities. Like in the picture below, the topuniversities.com website.
3. Systematic navigation
Choose a university from the list. Ideally, you should do it systematically, say following a top-down approach starting from the best-ranked and going downwards. So let’s say you choose: Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin).
4. Find research/faculty page on Uni website
Go to the University website and explore. Remember translating to English where needed. You will be looking out for menu pointing to the research information of the university such as “academic programs” or “research” or “departments”. Don’t expect them to look the same for all the universities.
- This below doesn’t help as there are no links to the academics and their research. Dead end!
- Now I go to “Faculties”. This looks more promising
- Bingo! We found what we were looking for. You can now look for one of the research areas in the query given
- Let’s check out Olaf Hellwich
We can get his contact, and if he has any personal website, we can go in there to find additional information.
I hope this helps. How have you been going about admission and potential supervisors’ search? Please also share any hurdles you faced and questions you may have about the process.
My problem is funding. I need a university that can fund my postgraduate journey. I have actually been learning from those of you that got scholarships. I actually have not started applying because I’m still expecting my transcript. But I need more information on how to fund my education
My first degree was in Medical Laboratory Science but I’m very much interested in ICT.
I undertook a program on programming with Python during my service year at the NIIT study centre in Portharcourt. I have since come to love programming.
I wish to continue with machine learning and AI but I don’t know if I can be given a postgraduate admission to study Machine Learning and AI looking at my first degree.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks.
Hi Justin,
Thanks for your comment. I have written a number of articles on postgraduate funding. One of them could be a good starter to know the routes through which you can access scholarships.
https://scholarleen.com/where-do-graduate-scholarship-funds-come-from/
More are coming, so please do check back on this website. Regarding your question about furthering your studies in Machine Learning and AI, admission prospects may vary from one institution to the other depending on their eligibility criteria for the course. You should check this with the university admissions team. Some universities may admit you if you show sufficient work experience or supplemental studies in the area of ML and AI. Hope this helps. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any further questions. All the best!
Your website is always rich with information. Like us who are ambitious but still somehow far, I enjoy reading and learning. I hope to be fully ready and prepared by the time I’m formally due to take apply the steps am garnering here.
Thanks once more.
Very kind comment about my website. Thanks! Great to see that you are learning far ahead of the time. It implies that you will be better informed and prepared when the opportunity comes knocking. Keep it up!
I have been looking for a supervisor that has interest in oil spill studies..Very here to find ..dont know what else to do…Chemistry Phd
Hi Charles,
Thanks for making me aware of your circumstance. I could imagine the challenge of finding an academic in such a niche research area. I will be releasing a blog post that should hopefully address these kinds of concerns. Please keep an eye out for it, and do let me know if it’s of any help when the article is published.