On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 9:20 PM, Ivan Andrus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I apologize for asking here since this probably isn't the best place, > but I've seen several people looking for students so I thought I'd > give it a shot the other way around. > > I graduated with a Master's (in Math) 3 years ago (I used GAP at that > time). I have been working for Omniture since then writing mostly C++ > and php. I am applying to schools right now, and I would like to do > work on Sage (or a component of Sage) as part of my Ph.D. I would > also like to study abroad, though that's certainly not necessary. I > speak Spanish, a little French, and am trying to learn German (my wife > speaks). > > I have two main questions: > > 1. What schools are looking for Ph.D. students to work on Sage? I > assume U of W, but are any others looking for Sage developers > specifically?
I don't think there are any schools(including UW) that specifically look for Sage developers as students. At least in the US what happens is that a Ph.D. student in mathematics (at least) would do their Ph.D. in mathematics. If their Ph.D. work happens to have a very computational flavor, then they may do a lot of computations as part of their thesis work, and these computations might be done using Sage. If so, then they would likely work with Sage a lot, and in cases where Sage is missing features hey want, they would add those features to Sage. In this way, they would do Sage development as part of their Ph.D. work, but none of it would really directly "count" toward the Ph.D. An example of such a student is Nick Alexander, who is doing a Ph.D. at UC Irvine with Alice Silverberg on cryptography -- he uses Sage and when he needs Sage to do things that it doesn't do, he often adds it. I have two Ph.D. students right now, and both of them do of course do a lot of work on Sage, and sometimes they're supported full time to work on Sage. But they will earn their Ph.D.'s by doing good ol' mathematical research. So the short answer is that you could (and should :-) ) work on Sage a lot in nearly any Ph.D. program in the world. > 2. What (if anything) should I put on my application that might catch > the eye of Sage people at those schools? I have tried a few times in > the past to contribute something to Sage to bolster my application, > but things kept coming up--work, licensing issues, and not least a > baby. Would contributing something non-mathematical (e.g. sage.el, a > nice Mac App) help at all? How about a letter of recommendation from > my employer (as well as from professors)? Letters of recommendation are critical to getting into grad school. Mentioning that you know Sage on your CV and are interested in contributing to open source math software in your statement of intent would be good. People usually look very favorably on such positive "community service", which is a lot of what contributing to Sage is. William > All thoughts and comments are welcome (including pointing to a page on > the wiki that I didn't find or something). > > Thanks, > Ivan Andrus > > > > > -- William Stein Associate Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
