Why you should consider Rutgers and INSPIRE Lab: There are plenty of reasons for you to choose Rutgers and INSPIRE Lab for your graduate studies. Rutgers is one of the eighth oldest institutions of higher education in the US, established even before the founding of the US! Today, with memberships in the exclusive Association of American Universities and the Big Ten Academic Alliance, annual research expenditure in excess of $650 million, and numerous top-ranked academic programs, Rutgers is considered one of the power houses in research universities. In addition, geographic proximity of Rutgers to New York City and Philadephia, the beautiful shores of New Jersey, the scenic Pocono Mountains, and the soothing Delaware Water Gap means you will have plenty of things to do at Rutgers besides research.

At INSPIRE Lab, we also care deeply about the success of its members. Graduate students in INSPIRE Lab, contingent on performance and availability of funds, are financially supported throughout the duration of their studies. This support includes generous annual stipend of close to $30,000 per year, full tuition waiver, and comprehensive medical benefits. In addition, special attention is paid to the professional development of its members, which includes sponsoring of trips to research conferences and workshops throughout the world, arrangement of summer internships through industry contacts, interactions with world-class researchers as part of the SIP Seminar Series, and weekly one-on-one and monthly lab meetings. By the time students graduate from INSPIRE Lab, they become accomplished researchers ready to have successful careers in academia, research labs, big corporations, and startups.

Are you the right fit for INSPIRE Lab: The research projects at INSPIRE Lab cut across a number of technical areas, with the major ones being mathematical signal processing, computational harmonic analysis, statistics, machine learning, optimization, and distributed processing. Within these technical areas, the two main themes that define INSPIRE Lab’s research are computational algorithms and mathematical guarantees. We are therefore looking for students who feel excited about designing computational algorithms and proving the effectiveness of these algorithms for various information processing tasks. As such, in addition to being motivated, passionate, hardworking, and outside-the-box thinkers, INSPIRE Lab students need to have the ability to translate real-world problems into abstract mathematical ones and to demonstrate the efficacy of their mathematical solutions through implementations in Python, R, and/or Matlab.

Suggested steps for joining INSPIRE Lab: If you consider yourself to be a good fit for INSPIRE Lab then the first thing to do is to apply for admissions into the graduate program of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rutgers. Please note that the department does accept graduate applications throughout the year, even though some of the pages list specific deadlines. It is, however, important for you to know that INSPIRE Lab cannot help you avoid any of the official admission requirements (like GRE, TOEFL, etc.), so please do not send any emails to this effect. If you need any clarifications regarding admissions requirements and/or need to resolve any issues about your application, you should directly get in touch with the departmental graduate office.

Next, if you are planning on earning only an MS degree from Rutgers then you must first physically come to Rutgers, take at least three graduate courses in the first semester that are directly related to INSPIRE Lab’s research with a minimum grade of B+ in all courses, and then secure an appointment with Prof. Bajwa by sending an email that includes your undergraduate and graduate transcripts, your detailed CV, your standardized test scores, and your reasons for joining INSPIRE Lab. Please ensure that your reasons are stated in relation to INSPIRE Lab’s research; emails with “canned” reasons and/or the ones not adhering to these guidelines will not get a reply.

If, on the other hand, your goal is earning an MS/PhD degree from Rutgers (even if you only have a bachelor’s degree) then you should adhere to the following guidelines. First, you should ensure that your statement for graduate admissions includes your desire to join INSPIRE Lab. Second, you should send an email to Prof. Bajwa according to the following schedule: January for fall admissions and September for spring admissions. This email should include your undergraduate and graduate transcripts, your detailed CV, and your standardized test scores. In addition, please include a document in this email that carefully addresses the following points:

• Why do you want to join INSPIRE Lab? Please avoid “canned” responses.
• Why do you think you will be a good fit for INSPIRE Lab? Please reply in light of the above description of “good fit.”
• What are two papers from INSPIRE Lab in the last five years that interested you the most? Please be explicit and detailed.

It will be best if you could include all the requested materials into a single PDF file. Based on your email as well as INSPIRE Lab’s funding situation, and assuming that the department recommends you for admission, Prof. Bajwa typically follows up with a shortlist of applicants for Skype interviews and final hiring decisions.