What does it take to graduate? For an MS student finishing your coursework is enough to graduate. If you are working on a research project with me, it will usually take you 9-18 months to complete the project, write the MS thesis and graduate. Some of this time can be overlapped with coursework but your path to graduation will generally take longer than just doing the coursework. On the upside, research experience will improve your chances of finding a good job. If you just want to do research but not write the MS thesis, you can do this in parallel with your coursework as a for-credit class. I will expect you to produce some deliverable (a paper or a piece of code) so make sure you have enough time and effort to dedicate to your research.

If you are a PhD student, you should expect to do one project for your MS degree, or simply as an entry task to join the group, then work on your PhD topic. Your overall research work (courses, an MS, a PhD and any other research you get involved in) should yield about 8-10 papers until your graduation, and at least 1-2 of those should be journal papers. These are not hard and fast rules, but they will help you monitor your progress toward a degree. You should expect to find your topic before the end of the second year of our joint work, then graduate within 2-3 years. Your proposal defense (qualifying exam) will take time during these 2-3 years and roughly about 1-2 years before you graduate. If you already have an MS degree this whole process may take even less time. The speed of your graduation will ultimately depend on the quality of your work and the nature of your PhD topic (some topics require more work than others) but I will do my best to help you graduate within a reasonable time frame.