This comment relates to exceptional undergraduate students with whom you work and who might be considering graduate school. The following comments are unofficial and generally "off the top of my head", so I cannot guarantee there are no factual errors within. None are intentional. -ds
=== I am a faculty member in the Department of Scientific Computing at Florida State University (https://www.sc.fsu.edu/ - we are in the process of overhauling our rather uninspiring website). Our department provides a rather unique, interdisciplinary opportunity to combine math and computation and domain-specific knowledge to address issues across a wide range of research fields. Specialties within our department include: astrophysics, ground-water modeling, fluid mechanics, population genetics, phylogenetics, computational geometry, morphometrics, medical imaging, optimization, materials modeling, bio-membrane modeling, game design, etc. In my own lab (http://morphlab.sc.fsu.edu/), current projects include applied and methodological work on: non-linear image analysis, artificial cranial deformation, surface analysis, visualization and graphics, functional morphology, animal vocalization, visual searching, integration of complex data types, age-at-death estimation, classification methods, motion analysis, etc. These projects have direct application (and often collaborators in): anthropology (paleo, forensic, physical), archaeology, art history, evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation, safety and industrial hygiene, design, medicine, etc. The department offers several Master's and Ph.D. degree tracks. Both thesis and coursework Master's tracks are available. Doctoral students are required to take a preliminary comprehensive qualifying exam. The design of our programs not only allow, but require, taking graduate courses outside of our department. So, for instance, one could take advanced evolutionary biology in the Bio department or courses in Anthro, Stats, Math, Earth_Ocean_and_Atmospheric_Science, Art, Criminology, Music, etc. I think someone interested in pursuing a doctoral degree in a more traditional field, like anthropology, evolutionary biology, ecology, or many others, would be well-served by getting a Scientific Computing Master's degree. A strong background in a traditional field and a M.Sc. from our department would surely move a candidate to the top of almost any doctoral-program admissions list in these areas. Furthermore, if such a student were to continue to develop and apply their sci-comp skills in their doctoral work, they would be well-positioned to rise to the top of their respective field, as quantitative and computational skills in many areas are often rather lacking. In fact, it is not that far fetched to imagine someone with a freshly minted Ph.D., who was not utterly sick of coursework, coming to our department to add a very marketable skill set to their résumé. What would be required for success in our program are good, but basic, backgrounds in math and programming and a passion for at least one of these. That is, top grades in related coursework (calculus, stats, a programming course) usually required as part of a science degree should be sufficient. One can make up a deficiency in one of these areas, but it would be difficult, I think, to master all of them with no recent background. As an example, one of our current top, award-winning graduate students did not know (or had completely forgotten) linear algebra when he arrived, but had done previous work in modeling and programming. I can attest to the outstanding quality of our faculty in the realm of teaching. My office is near the computer classroom, and I regularly listen in the lectures. I would love to have had the opportunity to take courses from these instructors in the course of my career. This posting is certainly not a guarantee of acceptance into our program or of research support of students from traditional fields. We have a limited number of slots depending upon graduation, current funding, etc. - probably 6 or so for next year. But, we make no distinction between Master's and doctoral students in our admissions and generally try to provide financial support. I would expect there could be a place for an exceptional student with interest in a traditionally less-computational field. These are just comments and suggestions I expect might be useful to some of your undergraduates. Please pass them along as you see fit. Interested students could also contact me, but they may need to be repetitive and persistent as I probably average 40+ emails per day - I am sure many of you can relate. -Dennis E. Slice -- Department of Scientific Computing, The Florida State University Department of Anthropology, University of Vienna, Austria Website: http://morphlab.sc.fsu.edu -- MORPHMET may be accessed via its webpage at http://www.morphometrics.org To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to morphmet+unsubscr...@morphometrics.org.
