Summer Research Abroad

[anacron]

Hi guys,

I am interested in getting some information about doing research abroad once I enroll in a PhD program. I have the following questions about the process:

1) Is it even possible to do research at universities other than your own for a summer? Not like internships in industry or at national labs, but simply go to a different institution where you have the opportunity to work with experts in the field.

2) Are there formal study abroad programs that do exactly this for PhD students? If not, would you say that its very difficult to convince your home institution/advisor to let you do something like this.

3) Have any of you done something similar, where you have done research abroad?

4) Would I need to have a contact at the remote institution to make this happen? This should be a little simpler since I know a PhD student who is currently doing research at Delft this should help open doors (for Delft at least).

5) If research abroad is common, will I be funded for the duration of my stay?

Motivation:

Obviously it seems a little crazy that I would want to do research abroad when the main source of contributions (in HPC and Cloud Computing, and much of CS for that matter) have been here, in the US. However, the reason I would like to do this is because there are several (prominent) researchers in Europe and elsewhere who have made significant contributions to Cloud Computing (from Delft, EPFL and University of Melbourne, Australia). It would also be nice to travel for the summer and experience a different culture

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[ktel]

Check this out for an example: http://www.daad.org/page/46363/index.v3page;jsessionid=7nann5lkc0cdv

This is for academic exchanges to Germany. Some of them are so you can get your whole PhD in Germany, some are just for short term research exposure.

I did a course and research in Germany last summer through a partnership my university had with a university in Germany. My province (Alberta) also has close ties with this region of Germany (Saxony) so there are a variety of programs available for students to study or work abroad. When I was there I heard talk of the professors wanting to encourage more study abroad opportunities at the graduate level.

So to answer your questions:

1) Yes it is possible

2) I posted an example above, you would have to search yourself to find more

3) See my story

4) Not necessarily if your university already has a relationship with the remote institution, but if that's not the case, then you should make contact yourself

5) Possibly, depending on the program

[anacron]

Check this out for an example: http://www.daad.org/...d=7nann5lkc0cdv

This is for academic exchanges to Germany. Some of them are so you can get your whole PhD in Germany, some are just for short term research exposure.

I did a course and research in Germany last summer through a partnership my university had with a university in Germany. My province (Alberta) also has close ties with this region of Germany (Saxony) so there are a variety of programs available for students to study or work abroad. When I was there I heard talk of the professors wanting to encourage more study abroad opportunities at the graduate level.

So to answer your questions:

1) Yes it is possible

2) I posted an example above, you would have to search yourself to find more

3) See my story

4) Not necessarily if your university already has a relationship with the remote institution, but if that's not the case, then you should make contact yourself

5) Possibly, depending on the program

Thanks for sharing the link. I'm actually interested in studying in Germany, aswell. How was your time doing research there (I assume your research was CS related)?

Has anyone else had similar experiences and would like to share?

Edited July 20, 2011 by anacron

[ktel]

Thanks for sharing the link. I'm actually interested in studying in Germany, aswell. How was your time doing research there (I assume your research was CS related)?

Has anyone else had similar experiences and would like to share?

My research was not CS related, it was a renewable energy course and I did research with biogas afterwards. Just an example though! I know DAAD would fund CS research as well as engineering research.