Thank you for your interest in graduate study with me at Stony Brook. Because I am not on the admissions committee, I cannot accurately assess your chances of admission. Also, while I do advise students in computational biology, algorithms, and related areas, I do not commit to work with students until after they have completed at least one class with me here at Stony Brook. This is not intended to discourage you from applying to Stony Brook, however. Please go to http://www.cs.stonybrook.edu for more information and email graduate@cs.stonybrook.edu with questions.

I (Steven Skiena) very strongly recommend that M.S. students wait until the beginning of their second semester at Stony Brook before selecting their masters project. It is much better to spend a semester taking classes and getting to know what area you are really interested in than to grab the first project that will take you on. Typically my M.S. students arrive at Stony Brook in August, select their project in January, work on them in the spring, maybe in the summer, and then a lot the next fall.

I never take on on any M.S. students or Independent Study students in the Fall or the Summer, so there is no value in contacting me then. Instead, I encourage M.S. students potentially interested in working with me to take my Data Science course (CSE 519), which is offered in the fall. In January, I will typically take on three or four of the best masters students who are interested in working me, as judged by their performance in my class (particularly the course project) and their first-semester Stony Brook courses/grades.

All projects will require close interaction with my current Ph.D. students, and require physical presence in our lab for at least 16 hours a week.

Interested students should send email to algorithms@cs.stonybrook.edu with the subject "CSE523 Projects" that include links to their resume, personal website and github/bitbucket if available. Do not email them directly to me -- that will only prove conclusively that you do not know how to follow instructions.