But before then, I would like to know how I can get involved with research while working in the industry, apart from reading papers. Partly to boost my application chances, and also because I'm interested in research.
I have a wide range of interests at the moment: distributed systems, computer architecture, programming languages, etc, and I've been telling myself that I'll use the next few years to learn about these things and then specialize.
Does anyone here have any ideas, or have you done something similar? What would you advice?