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Chances for Top Students

Our top students get several privileges not available to most other students:

  1. We have a mailing list which we only share with our top students https://mail.ias.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/mailman/listinfo/top-students where we share job offers either within our group or with our research friends, internships with our friends among the top companies. We collaborate with and have placed students at ABB, AMAZON, BOSCH, FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, HONDA, HUAWEI, INTEL, MICROSOFT, NVIDIA, ...
  2. A personal but open invitation: If you ever need career advice, just pick up the phone and call me at my office. Or come by my office - even in Corona times! Or drop me a line! I will try to do my best to make sure that you succeed. I have mentored many of our top students to great success, both about the next career stations e.g., into acceptance at top PhD programs at the best universities in the world, as well as critical decisions, e.g., choice of a research topic.
  3. Outstanding recommendation letters: As a top student, you are allowed to prepare a draft template (see below).

Draft Recommendation Letter for Master's Students

Please modify the letter draft such that it fits you. Feel free 

 To Whom it May Concern:
 It is my pleasure to recommend \JANE~\DOE for [admission to \NAME_OF_PROGRAM at \NAME_OF_UNIVERSITY | \JOB at \COMPANY]. 

 I am a full professor (W3) for Intelligent Autonomous Systems at the Computer Science Department of the Technische Universit\"at Darmstadt and at the same time a senior research scientist. I have received a number of awards, including in particular  the Dick Volz Best 2007 US PhD Thesis Runner-Up Award, the Robotics: Science \& Systems - Early Career Spotlight, the INNS Young Investigator Award, and the IEEE Robotics \& Automation Society's Early Career Award as well as numerous best paper awards. In 2015, I received an ERC Starting Grant. Despite being a faculty member at TU Darmstadt only since 2011, I have already nurtured a series of outstanding young researchers into successful careers. These include a dozen new faculty members at leading universities in the USA (e.g., CMU, Ruttgers, U.Utah), Japan (e.g., RIKEN, Kyushu Tech), Germany (e.g., KIT, TU~Darmstadt), Austria (MU~Leoben) and Holland (TU Delft and UV Amsterdam), postdoctoral scholars at top computer science departments (including MIT, CMU, and Berkeley) and young leaders at top AI companies (including Amazon, Google and Facebook). 
 About 500 undergraduate and 200 graduate students take my lectures every year, and my team typically supervises about 15 Master's theses every year -- but I only provide reference letters for the students who stuck out tremendously. These 4--5 students per year (out of ~750) get added to our ``top student list'' as I can guarantee cannot go wrong with them.

 I came to know \JANE when I was \HER lecturer for [Robot Learning (a fifth year graduate class) | Computational Engineering \& Robotics (a third year undergraduate class)]. The course comprised [short description of course]. \JANE distinguished \HERSELF by [submitting an exceptionally well researched and interesting project on $TOPIC| \SHE did extremely well at the homework and the exam, but what really impressed me where her outstanding insightful questions and her drive to work on \TOPIC beyond the classroom]. I would rank \HER in the top 5% of students that I have taught in the past five years in respect of \HER writing ability and research skills.
 Overall, \JANE is highly intelligent and has outstanding analytical skills.  \HER research work during her [Master's/Bachelor's Thesis | directed research project (Integrated Project Robot Learning)] entitled \TITLE demonstrated her outstanding ability to $ABILITY,
 She exhibited extraordinary ideas on $RESEARCH_FIELD and shown unique intriguing research work on \THESIS_CONTENT.  \JANE has excellent communication skills. \HER written work is both clear and concise, as well as interesting to read. \SHE demonstrated an extraordinary ability at [conducting research projects that have led to \AN_OUTSTANDING_PUBLICATION | \HER studies on \TOPIC leading to outstanding grades and in-class performance]. 

 At a personal level, \JANE is a well disciplined, industrious student with a pleasant personality. \SHE went well beyond the [course | directed research project | Bachelor's/Master's thesis] requirements in terms of both quantity and quality. Throughout our interaction, \JANE demonstrated great perseverance and initiative. Not only was \SHE interested in and motivated to learn the material, but she always went beyond what we expected from \HER. \SHE has proven \HERSELF to have the perseverance, initiative, and intellectual creativity necessary for [\NAME_OF_PROGRAM at \NAME_OF_UNIVERSITY | \JOB at \COMPANY]. I would therefore highly recommend \JANE~\DOE. If \HER performance as a student in my institute is a good indication of how \SHE would perform as a graduate student, \SHE would be an extremely positive asset to [\NAME_OF_UNIVERSITY | \COMPANY].

 [MAKE SURE TO ADD A VERY PERSONAL SENTENCE HERE THAT ONLY A PROFESSOR COULD KNOW WHO KNOWS PERSONALLY.]

 If I can be of any further assistance, or provide you with any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me. I urge you to give this outstanding young high potential an opportunity at [\NAME_OF_UNIVERSITY | \COMPANY] -- I believe you cannot go wrong with \HER.

 Best wishes,