We are hiring new faculty in CS this year at Harvard - applications encouraged! See the job posting below.


Tenure-track Professor in Computer Science
Harvard University

The Computer Science program at Harvard benefits from its outstanding undergraduate and graduate students, an excellent location, significant industrial collaboration, and substantial support from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

We invite applications for a position as a tenure-track professor in Computer Science. The appointment is expected to begin on July 1, 2011.

We welcome outstanding applicants in all areas of computer science. We are particularly interested in areas related to machine learning, probabilistic modeling, and artificial intelligence. In terms of applications, areas of interest include computational science, engineering, or the social sciences. We encourage applications from candidates whose research examines computational issues raised by very large data sets or massively para…

Since it's the beginning of the semester, I've been thinking a bit about the common advice that I give to incoming PhD students. Say you're a new PhD student in Computer Science. What are the main things you should know when getting started? Here are some of my favorite tidbits; feel free to chime in with your own in the comments.
(Turns out that Margo Seltzer blogged on the same topic this week too! Great minds think alike.)

This year I have two new students -- Amos Waterland and Youngjune Gwon -- I'm kinda bummed that I'm on sabbatical and can't interact with them as much as I'd like, but they will be busy with classes anyway :-)
Don't let school get in the way of your education. My advisor, David Culler, was fond of this misquote of Mark Twain, but it's true. Classes and program requirements are important but what is far more important is becoming an expert in your area. If that means taking fewer classes each term so you have time to do some real r…

Every year I am approached by students asking about grad school in Computer Science. I generally sit down with them for an hour or so and go over all of the details of why you should go, what the tradeoffs are, where you should apply, what it takes to get in, and so forth. I figured it would be a good idea to write some of this advice up in a blog post so I can capture it in a more permanent form.
In this post, I will talk about why to do a PhD in Computer Science, and why not to do a PhD. Assuming you've already decided to go to grad school, I've blogged previously about how to get in. Later on I'll blog about where you should apply.
Masters vs. Ph.D.
First off, when I talk about "grad school," I mean doing a PhD. Many students ask me about doing a Master's degree after college. I don't generally recommend students from good CS programs do a Master's in CS, for several reasons: (1) it's expensive, (2) you can learn the same material as an undergrad…