Join ALSETLab

Looking for the Lab’s current members? Please follow this link to find the Lab’s team roster (past students, post-docs, researchers and visitors): Lab Roster!

2024-04-21: Notice to Prospective Researchers and Students

I am on sabbatical leave until mid-August 2024. Therefore, I will NOT be recruiting any students to join my team during that period. The earliest that I will be looking for students to join my team will be to join during Spring 2025.

Please do not email me with requests and questions about joining my research program, because I will not have available funding to support additional students.

About Joining my Team: ALSETLab

• Do you want to be part of the team? please read on below!!!
  • I have compiled this information to save both, YOU and me, our valuable time. There is important information regarding admission to graduate studies at RPI.
• To work in my team as an undergrad, MSc or PhD student under my supervision you have to be currently enrolled or formally admitted for graduate studies at RPI.
• Before you get in touch, read the text below! If you don’t read it will be obvious to me that you are just sending emails to multiple faculty without considering my requirements and my time. Bad start, so keep reading…
  • If you don’t read the stuff below, and contact me anyway, I will reply to you asking read the text below! So, you might as well keep reading…

Are you an undergrad or grad student at RPI?

• If you are an undergraduate at RPI, currently I am not taking in additional undergraduate students, please check back in Fall 2023 if I am taking student to work with my team.
• If you are a graduate student at RPI, please first check with your faculty advisor if it is ok to meet me.

Are you at another university in the USA or outside the USA?

• It is not necessary to contact me prior to application.
• For us to work together, you first need to apply for admission to our graduate program.
• Indicate that you want to work with me in your documentation once you have fulfilled the requirements for admission.
• Before you apply, please read the information below.

About the Admission Process and Funding Support Schemes

While I encourage you to apply, note that the admission to our program is subject to both the Institute’s admission process, and the ECSE departmental selection, where faculty (like me) do not have full authority or the final word in admission. I can only consider your case after you have gone through the admission process, if you are awarded a Teaching Assistantship and/or provided that I have relevant funding to support you as a Research Assistant or if you have your own fellowship to support your studies.

Funding Support for Graduate Studies:

If you are accepted to RPI’s graduate program, and you do not have your own fellowship, there are two forms of support:

• As a Teaching Assistant (TA): A teaching assistantship entitles you to a tuition waiver and you will be hired to help as a teaching assistant for 2 courses per semester, for which you will be paid a modest stipend.
  • This is a job which you are expected to carry out while taking courses and doing research - it is not a scholarship - you are supposed to be doing the three things simultaneously.
  • This means that you technically don’t have to pay for your graduate school during the period when you are supported as a TA (minor feeds, relocation, etc… needs to come from your pocket.)
  • This period is up to 4 semesters (two academic calendar years), and it does not include support during the summer break.
  • I was a TA myself during my first year at RPI, it is a great opportunity to figure out if you want to be a teacher, and also to work with a Professor with whom you want to work towards your PhD and can likely fund your work through an Research Assistantship, as described below.
• As a Research Assistant (RA): A research assistantship is similar to the TA position, with the difference that you do not have to help in the teaching or grading of courses or labs; and, it typically covers also the summer. (That means you will also receive a stipend during the summer).
  • An RA position is not a scholarship, you will be working in a research project that is funded by industry or through national research funds. You are expected to work exclusively in the research specific to the project all of the time except when you are taking courses.
  • Moreover, if you want to work with me as your supervisor, I will expect you to work exclusively in projects that are of my interest. If you want to pursue your own ideas, please find another faculty to be your supervisor.

During and after admission (as a TA or RA, or self-funded):

• If you plan to pay for your graduate studies (self-funded) or you have a fellowship, you will still be expected to work within my research area and within one of my research efforts. You are also expected to deliver at the same rate as other students under an RA. While there is some flexibility on what specific project you can work on, I have an ambitious research agenda and ideas that I want to pursue - you are welcome to contribute to this agenda, but if you have your own ideas that differ from my agenda, I suggest you find other faculty to work with.

• During the admission process, I might contact you if I have funding and/or interest on you. This initial contact does not mean you are admitted and that I will supervise you. Most likely I will give you a short research task to see if you are capable of working with me, this does not imply that you will be admitted.

• If you are interested to work with me and are admitted to RPI with a TA: this does not imply that I can immediately support you to work as a Research Assistant after the first 1 or 2 semesters.

  • If admitted, and offered a Teaching Assistantship, you will be able to shop around to see who you want to work with at the ECSE department. Other faculty may have interest in you, you might have a better chemistry with other supervisors, and/or more importantly, other faculty might have the funding to support you as an RA.
  • For me, funding an RA is a risk (I have limited funding and usually associated with highly challenging engineering projects), I need to know you well-enough before I fund you. So, if you want to work with me, I will give you a short project and see if you can deal with the kind of things I work with. If we have good working relationship and you are capable of doing the work, I can see how to get some funding to support you; however, I make absolutely no commitments unless I have accepted this risk and personally discussed it with you when you start working with me.

RPI’s Admission Requirements

List of Requirements

• Visit RPI’s Grad. Admission website to find out about the requirements here.

Test Scores:

• Ask the Admissions Office wether or not GRE Scores are required, if they are, as a guideline, the following are some scores you should aim to obtain. Verbal: 156, Quantitative: 146, Analytical: 4.0. I strongly recommend you take the GRE if it is no longer mandatory, it will make your application stand out (if the scores are good), as others might not report scores.

• TOEFL score of 230 CBT/88 iBT/570 PBT (IELTS 6.5 or PTE 60) - these are minimum thresholds.

• Don’t shoot for the minimum! The list above gives you minimum scores that give an idea of the level expected for Institute-wide admission. Note that these are old numbers, I do not know what the current minimums are officially, but these are a good guess. Keep in mind that you are competing against applicants from everywhere in the world, and obviously, this means that your scores will be used as a basis for ranking you for admission (if required). Don’t shoot for the minimum, get as high scores as possible.

Study for the tests! Really!

You should be aware that many other students will be applying, and good test scores is an easy way of differentiating yourself from other applicants.

Before you do anything, and specially before taking the tests, you should prepare very well to attain the marks suggested above. Here’s what you can do to prepare:

1. Take a course: here or here.
2. Prepare using a practice book or website: here is a free one.
3. Repeat steps 1. and 2. above.

Where the list of available available positions or scope of work you are looking for?

Now that you have read the information above, please find the available positions described here.

Just to check that you read, and after applying to RPI, you can contact me by sending me email to luigi dot vanfretti at gmail dot com and writing in the subject line: “Joining RPI ECSE Graduate Program: I immersed myself in the culture. Tasting the cuisine. But mostly building models in Modelica!”.

If you don’t write this in the heading, I will just send you a standard reply directing you to this website.

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