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Finding and Choosing an Advisor is of crucial importance to your journey toward your degree at NSE.  Personalities and personal mentoring aside, your selection will put you on a road toward an area of specialization within NSE. Once that path has been set, the majority of students will continue down that road to their degree.  Moreover, if you are not funding your own education, then the research in which you will be engaged will need to have sponsorship (financial resources).

Obviously there is no right or wrong way of approaching a professor about research projects. Most commonly in our department this is done in person. Here is a couple of suggestions as of what could better prepare you before approaching your professor of interest and potentially help you establish yourself as a strong candidate for the position you are interested in:

 

Update: we are currently working on collecting info from professors to fill in the "Open Research Positions" page hosted on this wiki site, so that you can get a sense of which professors have what type of projects available in the coming years.

  1. Research about the professors/groups you are interested in:
    1. Check out the professors' websites at MIT's NSE: keep in mind some of them might be out of date, and not all professor listed on it is actively accepting students.
    2. Research about the professors' recent publications to get an idea of the projects he/she has. Two sites I like to start for searching for publications are:
      1. Engineering Village/Compendex: http://mv.ezproxy.com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/search/quick.url?database=1&acw=Web of Science: http://mv.ezproxy.com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/WOS_GeneralSearch_input.do?product=WOS&search_mode=GeneralSearch&SID=2AWV3POZSf6iXAnuVgI&preferencesSaved= Engineering Village (requires MIT certificate)
      2. Web of Science: Web of Science (requires MIT certificate)
    3. Ask the graduate students that work in the group. These sites (currently under construction) would provide info on who to contact: Research Groups h/NSE/NSE+Student+Office+Directory+%28Excluding+PSFC%2C+RLE%29+10-2012 Your Buddy should be able to help you find someone who can help.
  2. Email the professor of interest and politely ask whether he/she can meet briefly to discuss whether he/she has new opening and/or funding available.
  3. Decide on a group/project. You should definitely decide by the end of first year.
New:  An online directory of NSE affiliated PIs looking for students (which will be populated by August 15, 2016) at https://mv-ezproxy-com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/NSERAs/.  The link also has information on where to find for Department and affiliated research pages and resources. Note that the page linked above requires MIT certificates, so be sure to install those first.