Email Rules

I get swamped with email! At times, I have gotten over 800 emails per day where finding the urgent and important emails was already a tough task. If I spent all day answering email, I would be no use to anyone. Thus, please, please help me survive and prevent this denial-of-service attack on my attention. One step towards this goal is to follow my email rules such that I still can answer most emails:

  • Job, Scholarship & Internships Applications: Submit your application materials through our application website. Please do not send applications by email, we cannot consider them, use our application website. (For emailed applications, you may not receive an answer due to the many spam applications; in some cases, we are legally bound to not consider you as a candidate if you have applied by email, and, potentially, flooding inboxes may bias us during future applications. Also, if you email me an application, we know that you have not visited my homepage and have not read this text, which does not start us off on the right foot). I will not even see copy & paste applications with megabytes of PDFs as my spam filter removes them, please forgive me, but you will not receive a reply. If we have open positions, they will be listed at here. Scholarship applications (including DAAD WISE, CSC or other) and internships (we only host interns who bring their own funding) will also only be considered if send through our application website.
  • O1 Visa Application Requests: I get a lot of requests for supporting O1 Visa Application Requests for individuals with extraordinary achievements in sciences. If you think I should support yours, please explain in your email: (i) Is your research topic so close to me that I can honestly judge whether you are such an individual? Does it refer to my work or work of team members working with me? (ii) Why should I support you in particular? BTW: I will not reply to some researchers who "accidentally re-invented" contributions of our team members without referring to it as such bad scholars are not worthy of such an O1 visum.
  • Prüfungspläne und Mentorenwechsel für Computational Engineering: Die Prüfungspläne und Formulare zum Mentorenwechsel bitte immer direkt per email an ce-pruefungsplaene@ias.tu-darmstadt.de. Bitte nicht per email an meine Adresse, da gehen sie bei 500 Emails pro Tag einfach unter!
  • All emails regarding me being Studiendekan need to go to email address studiendekan@informatik.tu-darmstadt.de!!! Noncompliant emails will be deleted for legal reasons.
  • Student Recommendation Letters: I prefer to write recommendation letters only for students whom I really can strongly recommend with a positive letter. Weak letters do not help you. Thus, please think, if you have caught my eye due to your research and/or performance in my classes before requesting one. Naturally, all students whom we have added to the IAS Top-Student List should request a letter from me when needed.
  • Administration: Alle administrativen Angelegenheiten (Studienbüro, Personal, etc) bitte immer *DIREKT* an office@ias.tu-darmstadt.de. Ich kriege 500 Emails pro Tag und mehr als 100 Emails pro Tag bleiben daher unbearbeitet.
  • Aggressive Spam Filtering: Make sure to really address the email to me. My aggressively spam filter flags emails starting with Dear Sir... or Respected Sir as spam. Please forgive me if I never get to read them...