About
About XeraLink
Who is XeraLink for?+
Anyone looking for a research supervisor or collaborator: students applying to master's or PhD programs, graduates looking for a postdoc, and researchers looking for a collaborator at another university.
Which universities are included?+
McMaster University is included in full: every faculty member in its public directory, with publications, courses and collaborators. At the University of Ottawa, the University of Toronto, Western, UQAM, the University of Guelph and the University of New Brunswick, research faculty in every field come from the university's research directory, and six dental schools add their own lists. Researchers in every field at about 90 Canadian universities are also included from public funding records, with their grants, research keywords and the papers we find for them in PubMed: everyone who led a CIHR health research grant since 2012, everyone paid by an NSERC grant in the natural sciences or engineering since 2020, and everyone who has held an SSHRC research grant or research chair in the social sciences and humanities since 2018. Profiles also list Canada Research Chairs and awards from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Genome Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, the Fonds de recherche du Québec (Santé, Nature et technologies, Société et culture), Ontario's research funding programs, Michael Smith Health Research BC, the Canadian Cancer Society, Heart & Stroke and Brain Canada.
How does the search rank professors?+
A full text search first finds faculty whose research areas, recent paper titles, courses and bio use the words you typed. Jev then reads the leading candidates and grades how closely each one's research matches your topic, from “same field” to “strong match”, and picks their most relevant paper.
Does a professor take students if they teach graduate courses?+
Not necessarily. The supervision signals on each profile (graduate courses, recent papers, senior authorship) come from public records and show who is likely active. Always ask the professor or the graduate program whether they are taking new students.
How should I contact a potential supervisor?+
Read two or three of their recent papers first. Then send a short email that says what you want to study, why their work fits, and what you have done so far, with your CV attached. Each profile has a draft that cites one of their papers to start from.
Is my CV stored?+
No. The file is read on our server to extract its text, parts of the text are sent to Jev to be judged, and nothing is kept after the results are shown. See the privacy policy for details.
Something on a profile is wrong. What can I do?+
Use “Suggest a correction” at the bottom of the profile, or the contact form. Profiles are refreshed from the university's public directory, so corrections there also reach XeraLink.