Getting to Doctoral Studies in CS at Aalto University

If you are an Aalto CS student

1. Focus on courses relevant to the topics you would like to do your doctoral thesis in (Highly recommended!)
2. Do a summer internship in a research group related to your topic of interests (Highly recommended!)
3. Do a master's thesis in a research group related to your topic of interests (Highly recommended!)
4. After completing your master's thesis, enquire about doctoral student positions

If you are currently studying outside Aalto

• Find out if Aalto University computer science department is advertising doctoral student positions. If so, apply.
• DO NOT contact professors directly! Those emails generally will not be answered, as they are considered to be spam email. If they are answered, you are directed to the previous step, that is, find out if there are any open positions for doctoral students.
• You CAN contact a professor directly, in exceptional cases:
  1. You know the professor because of prior contact (typically as an Aalto student)
  2. You have completed a Master's Thesis on a topic of direct relevance to the professor's research topics. (In my case it would have to be a thesis related to Logic in CS/AI, Formal Methods in AI or Software Engineering, automated planning/decision-making. If you just did "some AI/ML stuff" of no interest to me, please do not contact me!)
  3. You have a published paper in a top international journal or conference on a topic of direct relevance to the professor's research topics. (In my case this is conferences like IJCAI, AAAI, ECAI, KR&R, ICAPS, CP, SAT, CPAIOR, CAV, and TACAS, or journals like JAIR, AIJ, JAR, JLP, and the topics of the paper are as listed right above.)