Patrick's Information for Prospective Students

I generally only fund students with whom I have worked in the past or that have a recommendation from someone I trust (e.g. a faculty member at another university). As such, the best way to work with me is to take a class from me, do good work in that class, and then ask me about research possibilities around the middle of the semester or later. If you know that you want to work in systems, another option is to talk to me about attending our research group meetings so that you can listen for information about the kinds of things we're working on. Opportunities occasionally come up in these meetings for projects that can get you started working with our group, and attending our meetings will give you some of the background needed to start on this research. Note that I'd strongly encourage undergraduates considering graduate school to talk to me about pursuing this later option; undergraduate research experience is a strong plus when applying for admissions to graduate schools.

UNM Computer Science has both thesis and non-thesis Master's degree options, with the non-thesis (exam) option being by far the easier of the two. I generally recommend that students looking for industry jobs in the short term take the non-thesis option, though in the case of exceptional students looking to specialize in certain areas, a Master's thesis can be very useful. Master's students who are considering continuing in a Ph.D. program either here or at another university should consider doing a thesis, as it gives a good introduction to the kind of work involved in doing the independent research central to a Ph.D. I am more than willing to entertain ideas for Master's theses, though before I agree to supervise a thesis, I must have a good reason to believe that you have the time and knowledge required to perform the in-depth research required of such an undertaking.