One of the big challenges for university researchers is trying to find talent and dedication in the enormous pool of undergrads and masters students. Nearly ev

One of the big challenges for university researchers is trying to find talent and dedication in the enormous pool of undergrads and masters students. Nearly every professor relies heavily on the recommendation system or grabbing from the pool of students in a class. The problem with this is that it's often hit or miss with a net-neutral return on investment. If I send a PhD student to spend a certain amount of time independently training two students, then I am investing that grad student's time into something that could be spent doing research. If one of those students is flaky and is mostly there to pad their resume, it's largely a lost investment (even more so if their work requires extra effort to fix). If the other is graduated by the following semester, the gained productivity might not exceed the other's loss by the time they leave. The best situation is when you're working with an undergrad who is destined to continue on to the PhD program because you know they'll be dedicated and possibly have a head-start on their thesis work. If you could figure out how to connect these students with advisors using metrics and private social networking, then you will amplify their productivity significantly. You'll improve the likelihood professors will take on undergrads and potentially push researchers into the field earlier. How you achieve this, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps you can make it easy to set up competitions which test the skills you need. The winners will be asked to join the lab to work on some project. If some lab on the other side of the country which does similar research also wants to do the same competition, make it easy for them to share and run it.