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Media Research Laboratory Computer Science Department Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences

New York University 719 Broadway, 12th fl
New York, NY 10003

+1 212 998 4857

ajsecord cs nyu edu

Degrees

Honours BMath, joint Computer Science and Applied Math, University of Waterloo, 1995–2000

A "BMath" is Waterloo's designation for a Bachelor's in Mathematics, since CS was a part of the Faculty of Mathematics at that point in time. I feel that the combination of math and computers has served me very well.

I was also a part of the co-operative education program that Waterloo pioneered. In co-op I rotated between four months of school and four months at a job in industry. You competed for the jobs with the other students, and for the most part the work was highly relevant. I did some vision research at NCR, helped with a steam tube inspection program for nuclear reactors at Atomic Energy of Canada, and some bioinformatics research with a professor at Waterloo. Many of my friends worked at video game companies, banks, movie prodcution companies, etc.

MSc, Computer Science, University of British Columbia, 2000–2002

In Canada, a research Master's is the first part of your PhD, that is, the MSc forms the first part of the PhD program. It is generally a year of courses and then a year of research, culminating in a small dissertation, after which you would continue directly on into the third year of your PhD. This is different from Master's degrees in the United States, which are generally considered "terminal" and do not lead into a PhD. The advantage is that the student gets to do real research and have some experience with the pain of writing a dissertation before embarking on a full PhD program.

The Computer Science department at UBC has one of the most collegiate atmospheres of any CS department that I have visited. I knew most of the faculty by first-name basis and the graduate students were fully integrated into the workings of the department. For example, the graduate student representatives on department committees had full voting rights with very few exceptions. The atmosphere at the department combined with the amazing surroundings of Vancouver made my two years there very happy academically.

PhD in progress, Computer Science, New York University, 2003–present

I am a member of the Media Research Lab, members of which are currently researching computer graphics and vision and machine learning. So far, so good. Both the faculty and students are great to work with and we have the nicest lab environment in NYU computer science. The lab lives in the heart of New York City, which is exciting most of the time but can also be a bit overwhelming.