Speaker

Samir Khuller

Talk Title

How to succeed in doing a PhD? The untold story.....

Abstract

Doing a PhD is about doing innovative research. However, even after doing innovative research, sometimes people are not successful in their goals. Why?

While doing a PhD there are many skills that are needed for long term life/career success. How should you plan/prepare for this? How do you prepare for long term success in a research career? How should you take advantage of the cards in life you are dealt with?

In this talk, I will share a few lessons - some I learnt the hard way, some I learnt by sheer luck and others I am yet to learn. However, I am happy to share what I know with you. At the end of the discussion, you are welcome to share your own lessons as well.

Part of this personal life story is about (a) how to be proactive (b) how to self evaluate yourself and (c) how to take advantage of pitfalls as well as opportunities.

Biography

Samir Khuller received his M.S and Ph.D from Cornell University in 1989 and 1990, respectively, under the supervision of Vijay Vazirani. He spent two years as a Research Associate at the University of Maryland, before joining the Computer Science Department in 1992, where he was a Professor for 27 years. He spent several summers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, and also visited the IBM Tokyo Research Lab for several weeks. From 2003 to 2008 he was the Associate Chair for Graduate Education. and he was the first Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair for CS. As chair he led the development of the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation, a project completed in March 2019. In March 2019, Khuller joined Northwestern University as the Peter and Adrienne Barris Chair for CS.

Research/Interest Areas

Algorithm Design

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Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/94411561748