Ann Copestake's non-automated email response
This page is not intended to deter anyone from emailing me, but just
an attempt to save everyone some time. It's primarily intended for
people who are trying to contact me for the first time. Unfortunately
I don't always have time to answer email: if you've tried emailing me
and got no response, please see if your email falls into one of the
categories below. You may have come to this page because of my
vacation message.
A couple of general points:
- For Departmental or University business, you may want to contact my PA or another member of staff listed in the
contact details for the Department. Contacting my PA is probably best if you are trying to arrange a meeting with me.
- Don't send emails with large
attachments or indeed any attachment if you can possibly avoid it. If
I want to see your cv or whatever, I will request it.
- Do not
spam! If you are sending email to several people, then make this
clear. (If you are sending email to so many people that the CC would
take up many lines, then there is a fair chance that you are
spamming. There are exceptions, such as party invitations, of course.)
- I am using fairly aggressive settings: see the end
of this page.
Here is some information for specific groups:
- Prospective PhD students. I am not expecting to take on any new students in 2021.
All questions about PhD admissions
not directly related to research should be
sent to
postgraduate.admissions@cl.cam.ac.uk
- Prospective students for
the MPhil in Advanced Computer Science.
For admission to the ACS, please read the ACS web pages and contact
postgraduate.admissions@cl.cam.ac.uk.
I am afraid I cannot currently take on any project supervision.
- Prospective interns. Sorry, but I don't take interns. We have no
funding for internships and I don't have the time to supervise
interns. I often get several messages a week requesting internships
and I have stopped responding to them (especially the ones that start
`Dear Sir').
- LKB and MRS related.
There are wiki pages for the
LKB system
and MRS and RMRS,
though the latter in particular are currently embryonic.
The archives for the
DELPH-IN mailing lists
may be more useful.
For LKB or MRS bugs or questions,
please use the developers list: see
DELPH-IN mailing lists.
There is a much better chance you will get a quick response that
way, since my co-developers read the lists.
If it isn't a general question, and I don't
respond, sorry - just try again ...
- CSLI book series. See
my CSLI book series page for some information.
CCing email to pubs@csli.stanford.edu is generally
a good idea.
- Other research or teaching related - I don't mind being prompted
(preferably politely) if
I have failed to respond within a reasonable time (which I
consider to be 3 working days during term time, 8 days outside
of term time or when on sabbatical).
I do generally try and respond faster than that.
If I ignore your prompt, then you may be triggering the
spam filter. To avoid this,
Computer Laboratory/University of Cambridge people should use their
Computer Lab/University accounts.
There are many innocent triggers of SpamAssassin, and they
vary over time, but one frequent problem is the use of base64 encoded text.
If you think your message may have been caught
by the filter, try again
including `Chichester Canal' in the subject
line. This also
has the advantage that it
demonstrates to me that you've taken the trouble
to look at this web page!