Find your faculty mentor. Know what to say.
CampusOtter is a chat assistant for current and incoming students at the Rollins School of Public Health. Tell it what you want to work on. It finds faculty whose research matches, helps you write a first email worth answering, and gets you ready for the meeting.
In pilot at the Rollins School of Public Health. You sign in with a code sent to your Emory email address.
CampusOtter
I'm a first-year MPH student in Epidemiology. Who works on maternal health and causal inference?
Two Rollins faculty match well.
- Dr. Maya Rivera, Associate Professor, Epidemiology Matched on: preterm birth, target trial emulation, Georgia birth records
- Dr. Daniel Okafor, Professor, Global Health Matched on: maternal mortality, quasi-experimental methods
Draft a first email to Dr. Rivera.
- To
- maya.rivera@example.edu
- Subject
- MPH student interested in your preterm birth work
Dear Dr. Rivera,
I am a first-year MPH student in Epidemiology. Your target trial study of preterm birth is close to what I hope to do for my thesis…
I sent itTailor my CV for Dr. RiveraHelp me prepare for the meeting
The whole idea in one minute
A student faces 265 faculty doors. See how CampusOtter narrows them to two, drafts the first email, and prepares the meeting.
From "I don't know who to ask" to a meeting on the calendar
You start with a short profile: your name, program, department, and research interests. If you upload your CV, it keeps a one-paragraph summary of your background and not the CV. After that it guides you one step at a time, suggests what to say next, and remembers where things stand with each person, so you can pick up days later on any device.
-
Find faculty whose work fits
Describe a topic, a method, or a population in your own words. CampusOtter searches the expertise of 265 Rollins faculty and shows who matches and why, with a link to each person's official page. It knows your program's rule on who can be your mentor, counts secondary appointments, and lists the people who qualify first. If you already have someone in mind, ask about them by name.
Dr. Maya Rivera, Associate Professor, Epidemiology
Matched on: preterm birth, target trial emulation, Georgia birth records
Official faculty page
Dr. Daniel Okafor, Professor, Global Health
Matched on: maternal mortality, quasi-experimental methods
Secondary appointment in Epidemiology, so eligible under your program's rule
Official faculty page
-
Write a first email worth answering
It reads the professor's papers from the last five years, checked against ORCID and PubMed, and your CV, then drafts a short email that says why you are writing to this person in particular and asks for 30 minutes. Drop your CV into the conversation and it suggests honest edits for the same reader, with the revised CV as a Word file. You copy the draft or open it in your own mail app.
- To
- maya.rivera@example.edu
- Subject
- MPH student interested in your preterm birth work
Dear Dr. Rivera,
I am a first-year MPH student in Epidemiology. Your target trial study of preterm birth is close to what I hope to do for my thesis. Last summer I cleaned and analyzed clinic survey data in R.
Would you have 30 minutes in the next few weeks to talk about whether I could contribute?
-
Walk in prepared
Before the meeting you get a one-page brief: which of their papers to read first, how to describe your own work in two or three sentences, questions to ask, and what you need from them under your program's rules, as a short table of what to do by when.
Before you meet Dr. Rivera
- Read first: two recent papers, by title
- Your work in three sentences
- Five questions to ask
- What your thesis needs from an advisor
-
Follow up, and keep track
After the meeting it drafts the thank-you that records what was agreed and lists what you owe by when. Your mentor list keeps where things stand with each person, your next step, and short notes on what you discussed, so a conversation days later starts where you left off. When a professor says yes, it celebrates with you and moves on to what your program needs next.
Where you left off
Dr. Rivera Agreed to be your advisor, Oct 9
Agreed
Next: Ask program staff which thesis forms are due by Oct 20
Dr. Okafor Emailed, Sep 30
Reach out
Next: Send a short nudge if there is no reply by Oct 14
And the paperwork
Ask what the practicum, a thesis, or a capstone requires in your department, for you and for the faculty member. Answers come from Rollins's own catalog and policy pages, with the source and the date it was retrieved, and a reminder to confirm with your department's program staff. The same rules shape who it suggests and what the first email asks for.
What it won't do
A student repeats what the assistant says to a professor. So it is strict about what it says.
- It won't guess about faculty. Everything it says about a person comes from their profile. If the profile doesn't say it, the assistant tells you so and points to the official page.
- It won't say who is taking students. It has no way to know. Finding out is what the email is for.
- It won't pad your CV. It reorders, cuts, and rephrases what you did. It never adds an experience or a skill you didn't give it.
- It won't send anything. Drafts stay drafts until you send them yourself, from your own account.
- It won't write a mass mailing. It steers you toward two or three well-matched people and a separate email for each.
For schools and departments
CampusOtter runs on the Research Map behind GrantOtter: a profile of each faculty member's expertise, publications, and funded work, built from public sources. The same map that helps your faculty find grants and collaborators helps your students find mentors.
We plan to offer CampusOtter to the students of schools and departments that have a GrantOtter institution subscription. The pilot is running at the Rollins School of Public Health.
- Sign-in is limited to your institution's email addresses.
- A monthly spending limit is built in, so the cost can't run away.
- Program requirements come from your own published catalog and handbooks, and your staff can review them.
- You can see how it is used in counts only: how many students reach each step and which faculty are approached most. Never their conversations.
For faculty
Your profile is built from public sources, such as your faculty page and your published work. Before a profile reaches CampusOtter, salary figures, award amounts, percent effort, review scores, and unpublished plans are removed.
Students see what you work on and a link to your official page, and they are told to check that page before relying on a detail. The assistant never tells a student that you are, or are not, taking students.
To correct your profile or have it removed, write to grantotter07@gmail.com.
For students: what it keeps
CampusOtter keeps your Emory email address and the short profile you fill in (name, program, department, and research interests). If you give it a CV, it keeps a one-paragraph summary of it, which you can read in your profile. It keeps your mentor list: the faculty you tell it you have chosen, emailed, or met, where things stand with each, your next step, and short notes on what you discussed. You can see, change, and delete it in your profile. It also keeps a record of how you use it, in counts and fixed labels only: how many messages you send, which step you are on (finding faculty, reaching out, preparing, or following up), which faculty profiles you open, and whether you copy an email draft.
It does not keep your messages, your CV itself, or what you search for. Your earlier conversations, with any CV you attached to one, are saved only in your own browser, so you can return to them there, and signing out removes them from it.
To produce replies, your messages, profile, and CV are sent to Anthropic's Claude API, and the topics you search for are sent to Voyage AI.