Graduate education; What to choose?

Hello,

I'm currently looking at possibilities of continuing my
professional education in 2005-2006 and became a Master
in Computer Science... And want to hear some advices
about directions that I can choose...

I'm from Russia. I'm skilled Perl programmer with 5+ years
of expirience. My best skills - perl, DBMS, XML, I made few
complex applications for web sites. I really like this areas. I
like research work, my current job related to marketing
research and statistics. I really glad when I work with
algorithms optimization and huge-volume data mining...

I also have two directions which I would like to choose, but
not worked in that area before... (artificial intelligence in
consumer products like intellectual home electronic... and
all kinds of work related to graphical maps [globe/city/...])

Could anyone just comment my "unsolid" thoughts?
My best side - Perl and I would like to continue work with
this basement (although I know C++ and other langs...)

What direction could you recommend?
(if someone know awesome universities in USA/Canada,
that could be not well-known - I'll glad to hear advices too.)

Thanks for everybody =)


Alex Sergeyev.

abc.RemoveThis@alexsergeyev.com (Alex Sergeyev) writes:
> I'm currently looking at possibilities of continuing my
> professional education in 2005-2006 and became a Master
> in Computer Science... And want to hear some advices
> about directions that I can choose...
>
> I'm from Russia. I'm skilled Perl programmer with 5+ years
> of expirience. My best skills - perl, DBMS, XML, I made few
> complex applications for web sites. I really like this areas. I
> like research work, my current job related to marketing
> research and statistics. I really glad when I work with
> algorithms optimization and huge-volume data mining...
>
> I also have two directions which I would like to choose, but
> not worked in that area before... (artificial intelligence in
> consumer products like intellectual home electronic... and
> all kinds of work related to graphical maps [globe/city/...])
>
> Could anyone just comment my "unsolid" thoughts?
> My best side - Perl and I would like to continue work with
> this basement (although I know C++ and other langs...)

Hmmm... let me try to translate your real-world interests into
"academic" ones. First of all, academic CS is divided roughly into the
following categories:

1 Theory (crypto, graphs, concurrency, algorithms, logic &c)
2 Languages (theory, implementation, "software engineering" &c)
3 Systems (networking, [distributed] OSes &c)
4 Hardware (architecture, embedded systems, biocomputers &c)
5 Applications (AI, bio-informatics, graphics &c)

<flame retardant>This is arbitrary. No warranty implied. If your
favorite field is not listed, I didn't mean to hurt your
feelings.</flame retardant>

Now looking at your interests, let me try to fit them within this
scheme.

- Complex optimization problems such as laying out maps are considered
AI, I believe, as is AI as applied to physical gadgets of various
sorts. Another buzzword describing some approaches to AI is "Machine
learning". If you want to find out more about this, you should
probably try to find the standard textbook "Modern AI" by Norvig.

- Datamining is most commonly researched in the context of
bio-informatics these days. It is well-funded and you can do it
virtually anywhere. I have no clue what books to read about it. There
is also research into "business information systems" in some places,
and of course it's a common theme in AI.

- Some theorists research algorithms do it as a discipline, but it
shows up extensively everywhere else. A good introduction to theory as
a whole is Sipser, for algorithms there are many.

- As far as programming languages go, the preference depends strongly
on your subfield and the local culture (C for systems, Lisp for AI
&c), but it is rarely Perl. Programming language research per se often
focuses on fairly exotic ones.

> What direction could you recommend?
> (if someone know awesome universities in USA/Canada,
> that could be not well-known - I'll glad to hear advices too.)

Remember that many US universities make you apply as early as
December.Also keep in mind that many graduate programs exist in the
EU. They are often cheaper and easier to get into, and depending on
your needs may be just as good.