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Re: Question about grad schools.



   There are lots of schools doing research in these topics.  One of the
   tricky questions is exactly what constitutes research, and what
   constitutes these topics.  Let me suggest two good (and non-mutually
   exclusive) ways of picking schools:
   - find the papers you like
   - apply to their authors

   and

   - determine which conferences publish the material that interests you
     (eg, Principles of Programming Languages, International Conference
     on Functional Programming, Foundations of Software Engineering, etc)
   - see the authors and program committee members
   - apply to them

Matt-

I'll second Shriram's advice. Note that it's only good advice if you *already*
know you *definitely* are a programming-languages sort of guy. If you don't
know what sub-field of CS is the one for you (PL, AI, etc.), then things are
more diffuse and selection is much harder. It's perfectly reasonable not to
know where you want to specialise when you're a college senior, btw. It just
means the selection process is more difficult.

   The one thing to keep in mind is, just because a school is large
   and/or has a good reputation, that doesn't mean it does anything in
   this area.  Indeed, many large and good schools aren't.

But, please note, Shriram does, so you should take a good look at Brown (And
so do I.) Shriram's such a fundamentally shy & low-key person that he would
never say this himself, so I will say it for him.

For those considering Brown for grad school, I will also add my random
observations: Besides Shriram, Maurice Herlihy does beautiful, elegant work on
parallel and concurrent systems and is also a very nice guy. Back when I was
a grad student, Brown was a leader in hypermedia/hypertext (this is before the
web, mind you, so this was radical) & computer graphics. These strengths are
quite likely still there.
    -Olin