Passion to find out?

Updated on: Thursday, August 25, 2011

“Our goal is to promote awareness of the realities of life as a researcher as well as encouraging active participation in research and mentoring by local faculty prior to application to graduate programmes,” says Carolyn Penstein Rosé.

She has spearheaded the development of the Internship Programme in Technology Supported Education, a partnership between faculty at the International Institute for Information Technology in Hyderabad (IIIT-H) and the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

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The programme has sponsorship and support from the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Centre, Microsoft Research India and the MacArthur Foundation. The goal is to reach out particularly to third year undergraduates at Indian institutions, to expose them to research, and to start mentoring relationships with the students, and ultimately research partnerships with faculty at their home institutions. The programme also offers students an opportunity to begin a wider professional network beyond the frontiers of their own institutions.

Students apply mainly to Computer Science, Information Science, Human-Computer Interaction and Language Technology programs.

Students might also consider applying for Learning Sciences and Technologies programmes, or interdisciplinary programmes involving Computer Science and Psychology.

Other requirements would include describing their research experience, their goals for participation, and provide information related to their academic achievement as well as letters of recommendation from faculty at their home institution. The deadline for the programme is towards the end of October. And the deadline for applying for an internship is usually in February.

Carolyn emphasises that today, in order to be competitive with graduate school applications, students should seek to get involved in an active research community. Finding a local mentor and collaborating with faculty oversees is an excellent way to start out down this path.

She says “students are requested to explain what they want to get from of the programme and what their ideas are for projects. We work to find a set of students with an appropriate distribution of interests and talents. Students who apply usually have GPA above 7.0, usually above 8.0.”

For more information, contact Carolyn at: [email protected].

Passion to find out?

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