Supervisor Statement

Thanks for your interest in working together! Here, you can learn about my approach to supervising student projects and theses, and understand whether this would be a good fit for you.

Our goals

Across all projects, I always like to keep three goals in focus.

#1. The project should be innovative, interdisciplinary, and meaningful. I care a lot about rigor and scientific excellence, and will support you in maintaining these standards throughout. I also believe research should serve society. This means working on topics that matter and can help improve the world, but also communicating our results beyond academic circles.

#2. You should have the space to develop your own ideas and feel ownership towards your project. The idea is not for you to implement some pre-defined project, but rather make the project your own. Ideally, you leave the collaboration having accomplished something you are genuinely proud of and that you can build on in the future (developing a product, demonstrating your competencies at job interviews, etc).

#3. The process should help you become a better scientist. Here, my role is to support you in finding what kind of scientist you want to become. Moreover, if you wish to pursue an academic career, we can also develop a strategy together to help you achieve this goal.

Bachelor / Master theses

For these projects, we will usually provide a clear framing that is feasible within the time scope of the project. For you to get a complete overview of the research pipeline, you will conduct the following steps: literature review, definition of research questions, design of a research protocol, design of a prototype, implementation of a learning tool, evaluation through a user study, data analysis, and, of course, thesis writing.

These projects are typically more guided than doctoral projects, and you would meet regularly with me or a member of the team, following a schedule established during your onboarding. You will not work in isolation, but rather exchange ideas with the other researchers in the team to help you refine your thoughts and contribute to the team's projects.

That being said, because of goals #2 and #3 above, we will gradually work towards you gaining more and more independence throughout the project.

Finally, depending on the results, I will also support and encourage the publication of your results in high-quality conferences or journals, either in the field of Human-Computer Interaction or the learning sciences.

Doctoral theses

Our doctoral projects are intentionally more open in scope. The idea is that you can explore the literature on your own and come up with your own ideas and projects. Concretely, this means I will not provide a detailed list of research questions to address or studies to conduct, but rather outline a scope of areas with potentially interesting research questions, and it will be your mission to articulate your own project within this scope. Indeed, I believe that being able to identify meaningful research questions and devise a plan to address these is one of the most important aspects of doctoral training (see goal #3).

Throughout the project, we will meet based on your needs. I always enjoy discussing science, so I like to go quite in depth during the meetings and give a lot of feedback. That being said, I always try to refrain from imposing my ideas or "giving solutions", but rather help you refine your own thinking and approaches.

Moreover, I will support and encourage the publication of your results in high-quality conferences or journals, either in the field of Human-Computer Interaction or the learning sciences. In particular, if you are planning on pursuing a career in academia, we can put together a strategy to support this.

Ideal candidates

As our team focuses on interdisciplinary research, we are looking for people who are curious to discover topics beyond their comfort zone, attentive to detail and able to integrate their learnings in a scientifically rigorous manner, and creative in developing innovative and daring solutions.

We care about impact and strive to make a difference in the world. We are particularly interested in candidates who are excited about making meaningful contributions to society.

We also care about building a healthy and safe work environment for all, with exchange and collaborations within the team and beyond, and we particularly value candidates who are excited about working in teams.

Finally, we are convinced that truly good and useful ideas come from teams that embrace their diversity, and this conviction is reflected in our hiring process.

That said, if you read this list and felt a mix of excitement and self-doubt — that's ok! Imposter syndrome is extremely common in academia, and the students who tend to thrive in our team are not necessarily those who feel the most confident, but those who are genuinely curious and willing to put in the work. We are not looking for a finished scientist, but someone who wants to become one. So if our research topics excite you, don't talk yourself out of applying.

Interested?

Explore our team's website for an overview of our current research topics and open positions!