<p>How often do professors go to other universities/national labs to do research? I often hear of professors doing this, but happens to their graduate students when this happens?</p>
<p>They basically go on as usual. To be honest, after a typical graduate student gets his or her sea legs, so to speak, they often don’t interact all that closely with their advisor on a regular basis. After all, the goal in graduate school, particularly with a PhD, is to learn to research, so the student ought to get to the point where they are practically running the show anyway. For MS students, it is a bit murkier.</p>
<p>It all depends on where you are in your PhD. If you’re really early, you’ll probably just have to find another research group. If you’ve been in the group for a year or so, you have the choice between moving with your professor (and figuring out which school you want to get the degree from), finding someone new to work with, or picking up a co-advisor at your original school. If you’re towards the end you’ll probably just stick around and finish up your PhD where ever you started.</p>
<p>Maybe I misunderstood the original post, but I didn’t interpret the question as being about professors moving to a new university/research institution, but taking a sabbatical or going and being a visiting researcher somewhere for 6 or 12 months.</p>
<p>I mean just a temporary leave to another university/lab.</p>