ME

## Advisor Style & Mentorship
When I was a student, there were around 7~8 students in total in his lab. Now it's around 10. AFAIK, there's no post-doc to help the PI supervise students. The PI meets each student in biweekly 1-1s and weekly lab meetings.
His style is more hands-off, offering you a lot of flexibility in your studies. The bad aspect is that, he is unable to provide much help, especially in areas that he isn't very knowledgeable in.
The PI is fairly accessible, and typically replies to emails reasonably fast. However, he sometimes shows incompetence in effectively using the tools like emails and he overlooks stuff (quite often), so you have to ask him whether he received it. Even in these cases he might still overlook it.

He has past his prime and his memory is really failing. I suggest you not to become his student. To make up for this decline in his ability to publish impactful papers, Dr. Ester is now recruiting more students, all while not having a postdoc or lab manager to help him supervise the students. He now has around 10 students in his lab, while he had around 7~8 when I was his student. An earlier graduate student said that, when he/she was Martin’s student, he only had 4 or 5 students in total, which was much better than when he had 7, because having fewer students allowed him more time to supervise each student and provide better guidance. And now with around 10 students, just guess the quality of his guidance for each student.

At least up to a couple of months ago, I knew that he still didn’t have a dedicated post-doc or lab manager to help supervise the students. So why is that? He clearly doesn’t have the capability to provide quality guidance to all his students, and yet he doesn’t hire a post-doc to help him with that. I don’t think he is really that poor that he cannot afford a postdoc, especially since he is now an RSC fellow and money shouldn’t be a big problem.

I suspect, compared to his own interest, he simply doesn’t care if the students he supervises get quality guidance and supervision. More students mean more chances for research output which benefits Dr. Ester himself, students can and have to teach themselves how to do research anyway, but when it comes to each student’s well-being, getting guidance of high quality, and getting better ROI of their research and having a better life, it never crosses Dr. Ester’s mind; or perhaps it does, but got significantly overweighed by Dr. Ester’s hobby of saving money, so he decided to keep the current approach rather than hiring postdocs to share some responsibility.

## Expectations for PhD Students
I wasn't a PhD student, only MSc. I think he expects 3~4 papers published before graduation, most likely 3. He doesn't expect students to work late or on weekends.
It usually takes PhD students 5 ~ 7 years to graduate in the lab. It's pretty close to departmental average.

## Funding & Support
Funding is the worst aspect. And Dr. Ester has a disguise of hypocrisy that isn't easy to see through at first: he appears to be a benevolent and generous person when he has a lot of funding, as happened to a younger student who came to his lab in 2019; but he becomes truly nasty to students and even violates the law when he has a shortage of funding.
When there is a shortage of funding, his true nature is revealed. He holds his interest in high regards and largely neglects other people's interest, even violating the law.
He deceived me into becoming his master's student by making false funding promises which eventually weren't fulfilled, and he refused to pay me the funding after my repeated requests. Several years after graduation, I finally did myself justice through legal action. See more details in https://www.antonfeng.me/martin-esters-breach-of-law-and-lessons-i-learned.
And it didn't just happen to myself; it happened to other students, though to a lesser degree.
In fall of 2018, he explicitly told everyone in a lab meeting that, the "overfulfilled" funding in prior years should be deducted from the funding in later years. This is clearly cheating the system, perhaps violating the offer letters which means breaching the Contract Law, all while the students didn't do anything wrong to deserve such "punishment".
When a younger student (call him "student A") enrolled in 2019, several things (unrelated to student A) happened to the lab that made Martin suddenly very rich, so student A was lucky enough to never have such crappy experience, and thought Martin was a very good person. Dr. Ester is deceptive like this.

In terms of supporting academic activities outside the lab, he is okay, there's nothing especially worth mentioning here.
As for other aspects of students' lives, I don't think it is particularly worth mentioning. He is friendly, but I think he just pretends to be supportive, while he is really not, just a hypocrite. And usually most life problems can be solved by money. If he doesn't pay you as he promised, then how can he support other aspects of your lives effectively? Nevertheless, when not considering the money, he does reasonably well in this aspect.

## Research
The research field of the lab are okay. They are generally hot topics, mainly bioinformatics and deep learning. However, Martin's knowledge and expertise into these fields can be quite limited.

Because he only started working on bioinformatics relatively recently, his knowledge and grasp of this field aren’t as good as some other professors who had started working on it years or decades before him. A student of Dr. Ester told me around 2018, that Martin’s knowledge in bioinformatics didn’t allow him to provide very helpful insights as to which research directions likely have high ROI (return on investment), and which directions have low ROI. As a result, this student felt it quite hard to get the paper published when he/she was working solely under Martin’s supervision; however, after starting a collaboration with another professor who was truly an expert in bioinformatics, his/her research output drastically improved without much more work.

The stability of research topics seemed fair. However, he sometimes takes new research directions (e.g., computer security, precision agriculture etc.) due to funding requirements, which I guess is normal.

As for how the projects are decided, I feel it is a mix: sometimes he assigns projects, sometimes the student selects his/her own project. The freedom seems okay.

Authorship seems okay.

## Lab Culture
Lab culture is okay. Interactions between lab members are mostly friendly and positive.

Drop-out rate seems to be low. Retention rate looks fair.

Doing internship is acceptable when he deems you as having done your research satisfactorily, but not acceptable if otherwise. However, when he has no funding, he might actively encourage you to apply for internship.

Dr. Ester really loves to save money. When the whole lab goes out dining, he never covers the bill; he always splits the bill. In Canada, I've never seen any other professor doing it, across all ethnic groups.

This bill-splitting behavior seems frivolous, but it reveals his true nature of being miserly. This has two important implications which are directly related to student experience:
1. When there is a shortage of resources, being a miserly person, Dr. Ester will be very nasty to you, depriving you of your legal rights for his own interest, which happend to me and the labmates in 2018. He prioritizes his own interest, especially money, FAR higher than your interest.
2. When it comes to hiring a dedicated post-doc or lab manager to help him supervise students, Dr. Ester would almost certainly say "no" to save money. This rejection likely means students get lower-quality supervision, have lower ROI in their research effort, have worse graduate study experience and defer their graduation, but Dr. Ester simply doesn't care, he loves to keep more money.


## Conclusion

Overall I don't think he is very bad, he can even appear really good when he has a lot of funding. But he has several red flags and I suggest you to stay away from him:

1. His research competence doesn't match his fame. His fame owes a lot to luck and the timing of the DBSCAN paper which was a low-hanging fruit, his actual research capability isn't that high, though still better than average. His knowledge and expertise in bioinformatics and deep learning are especially lower than his fame. And his memory is really failing. He forgets things A LOT, like, REALLY. It's very annoying. He was born in 1958 and is reaching the twilight of his career, he won't get any smarter, though his experience and grasp in bioinformatics and deep learning will get better as he learns.
His fame means the bar to enter his lab is relatively high, and if you qualify, most likely you can find a better professor. This is especially true if you want to do research and work in academia.
2. He has issues with personal integrity. He might deceive you like what happened to me. Deep down he doesn't treat you as equal human beings, he doesn't care about your interest or well-being, at least far less than his own. But when he has no shortage of funding, he may appear as a generous and benevolent person and won't be so nasty, in which case he seems to be a really good supervisor, so it also depends on your luck. But don't count on your luck.
3. He has too many students and obviously he isn't capable enough to supervise all of them with good quality. Yet he doesn't stop recruiting students, and he doesn't hire post-docs to help him supervise students. Obviously, he just treats students as paper-writing machines and doesn't care whether the students get fulfilling experience, although he might appear to care about you deeply. And of course he doesn't hire post-docs to help supervise students because he needs to save money, which is a hobby of Dr. Ester.

So, in summary, don't come.

### Credit
The photo of Prof. Martin Ester was created by SFU's Communications & Marketing department (see its [source](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sfupamr/48709364062/)), it is licensed under the [Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en), no modifications were made. For more info, you can visit the [Wikimedia link](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SFU_Professor_Martin_Ester_2019.jpg).

No, I don't recommend this PI.