Recruiting Research Assistants through a Graduate-level HPC Class in Latin America

During the introductory seminars to graduate school, a faculty professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign used to equate the process of finding an advisor (or finding students, for that matter) to that of finding a spouse. A good relationship student-advisor was like a good marriage. It is not easy to really find whom to work with in your research. Similarly, it is not easy to find whom to share your life with. Although I found the analogy quite amusing, I am not sure I would go to that extent when it comes to define the process of finding students to work in your research group. However, something is clear. If you want to build a productive research team, you would better be on the lookout for good students. How do you recruit them?

For those young assistant professors in Latin America starting a new research team, here is a little piece of advice. A graduate course is a very efficient mechanism to find good matches for your research group. Here are some of the reasons why:

• The course extends for a relatively long period (usually one semester), giving you time to get to know your students, both at the technical and personal level.
• The course exposes students to a fairly rich body of knowledge about a particular topic. Therefore, by the end of the semester the student will have a better clue on whether the topic is interesting or not.
• The graduate class is usually more flexible in the format. That opens up an opportunity to explore particular research problems that may engage students and bring them up to speed into your research agenda.
• The class usually has more students than available spots in your research group, so it gives you the chance to choose good elements from a bigger sample.

Note that the course works both ways: professor identify good candidates for their groups and students find attractive research groups. So, the course is a meeting point to establish long-lasting relationships and spark new and interesting collaborations. Make sure you carefully design your graduate class. Here are some recommendations:

• Provide a multiple-session introduction to the topic, where you cover most of the fundamentals of the discipline.
• Select intriguing papers (both recent and classic) to make up the reading list for the class. 
• Provide a small collection of project descriptions that students could pick up for their term project. That way you would have them working on your research direction and determine if they are a good match for your team. Make sure all projects generate a scientific write-up with the findings of the project.
• Schedule presentations from the students, so you can refine their presentation skills. As one of my colleagues says when it comes to the contribution of a paper "half is what you do, the other half is what you show".

Given that many universities in Latin America have a graduate program in Computer Science, you would have a good chance to offer a graduate course in HPC and start building your research group.