Working together
It's been great to work with so many wonderful people over the years, and I hope that continues for many years more to come 🤞😁
MSc students, PhD students, postdocs and research visitors (e.g. see Research - People for many of the people I've worked with in a supervisory capacity), and a number of other collaborators, both within my department and internationally - I've always loved it and found it incredibly stimulating and productive.
PhD Supervision
On average I have capacity to take on 1-2 PhD students per year as Primary Supervisor. I'm also happy to take a Secondary Supervisor role in a PhD project supervised by another colleague.
Please definitely do contact me first (and preferably in good time!) before submitting an application with my name as proposed supervisor. I strongly advise anybody and everybody who's applying for a PhD to do that. This is simply because:
- it gives a chance to look at the proposed PhD project at the earliest stages, to discuss it and decide (mutually!) whether it seems promising we could work together. Is there any point working to submit a proposal I won't ultimately feel able to supervise? Plus, a good working relationship is crucial between PhD candidate and supervisor. I would never agree to supervise a PhD for someone I hadn't interacted with at least a few times previously.
- ...and equally importantly, if I'm excited for the proposed topic and feel the proposal is going to be compelling and competitive, I can then myself contribute and help to develop the application and hopefully improve chances of success.
Note, that cooperation means giving feedback and advice in response to an initial "project pitch" coming from the PhD applicant.
If you want to approach me about doing a PhD with me as supervisor, please see my dedicated -> PhD Enquiries <- page first. It has detailed comments about what makes a strong impression in an initial email, along with what information to include.
Grants and other Research Collaborations
If you have an idea you think we could work on together, do get in touch! I'll be glad to hear the idea pitch and discuss things to see whether there's something we can do together.
MSc and honours dissertation projects
I supervise multiple dissertation projects each year for students on our MSc Speech and Language Processing programme, or other MSc students in the School of Informatics here at the University of Edinburgh. I have also supervised a small number of honours projects for undergraduate students in Linguistics or Informatics. Each Year I propose a list of projects which I think would make a good dissertation topic. I'm happy to consider variants of these though, or a project that a student proposes from scratch.
With teaching, admin and research commitments being what they are, and local students here at University of Edinburgh being my top priority, I regret to say I do not routinely have capacity to supervise dissertation projects of students studying for degrees at other universities round the world.
Finally, please also note that the MSc Speech and Language Processing degree does not have any funded places attached to it (in fact, I don't know of any UK MSc programmes which do have funding to provide free places). Therefore, there is no point emailing me to ask whether there are any funded places on our MSc programme, BUT we may be able to help if you want to apply for a scholarship you've seen and are eligible to apply for.
Internships
I very occasionally have funding to support an in-person internship. However, it doesn't happen very frequently and I would always publicly advertise any such opportunities, with precedence going to UEdin students and alumni. Therefore, please understand there is no point mailing to ask whether I have a paid internship that can be applied for, unless you've seen a specific call for applications. I am also very unlikely to supervise a "remote internship" (well, except during covid!), whether paid or unpaid - sorry, but there are only so many hours in a day.