Professor Email Formats: What 9,035 Real Addresses Show
Students who want to cold email a professor usually hit the same wall: the address isn't on the faculty page, so they guess. We wanted to know how often a guess actually works. ProfScout looks up a professor's email every time a student opens their profile, so we took 24,161 of those lookups, kept the 9,035 confirmed university addresses, and worked out which format each one uses.
The short answer: in Europe, professor emails are predictable. In the US, they aren't. Guessing the most common format at a professor's university is right about 72% of the time in the UK, but only 52% of the time in the US.
Europe uses firstname.lastname. The US uses everything.
Across the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden and France, firstname.lastname@ is the clear default. At the University of Oxford it covers 88% of the addresses we found, and at King's College London 93%. Some UK schools prefer a first initial instead (j.smith@ at Imperial and UCL), but each school is still fairly consistent.
American universities mostly let people pick their own username, and it shows. At Stanford University, 52% of professors use first initial plus last name (jsmith@) and 24% use their last name alone. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology it is 48% and 37%. A few US schools are predictable, like Yale University (91% firstname.lastname), and some use numbered usernames, like Ohio State University, where 91% of addresses look like smith.12@.
Most common formats by country
| Country | Addresses | Most common | Second |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 4,045 | flastname 33% | firstname.lastname 26% |
| United Kingdom | 949 | firstname.lastname 57% | f.lastname 21% |
| Canada | 643 | firstname.lastname 53% | flastname 20% |
| Germany | 586 | firstname.lastname 60% | lastname 16% |
| China | 375 | lastnamefirstname 20% | firstname.lastname 14% |
| Switzerland | 237 | firstname.lastname 69% | flastname 8% |
| Australia | 213 | firstname.lastname 63% | f.lastname 18% |
| Italy | 135 | firstname.lastname 70% | lastname.firstname 15% |
| Sweden | 131 | firstname.lastname 77% | lastname 5% |
| Spain | 123 | firstname.lastname 58% | flastname 12% |
| France | 122 | firstname.lastname 69% | flastname 9% |
| Singapore | 116 | firstname.lastname 19% | flastname 10% |
| Netherlands | 114 | firstname.lastname 50% | f.lastname 31% |
| India | 109 | flastname 27% | firstname.lastname 23% |
How often would a guess be right?
For every university with at least 20 confirmed addresses, we checked what share of its professors use that university's most common format. That is roughly your chance of being right if you guess.
| Country | Universities | Addresses | Guess right |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 10 | 680 | 72% |
| Germany | 5 | 132 | 69% |
| Switzerland | 3 | 152 | 66% |
| Australia | 3 | 71 | 66% |
| Canada | 7 | 344 | 56% |
| United States | 42 | 2,894 | 52% |
Even in the best case, about one guess in four is wrong. A wrong guess usually bounces quietly or reaches nobody, and you never find out. That is the main reason to confirm an address before you send.
Personal email addresses vary by country
About 8% of the professor addresses we found on papers were personal accounts rather than university ones. In some countries it is much more common, which matters if you are about to guess a university address that the professor never reads.
| Professor's country | Addresses | Personal email |
|---|---|---|
| India | 157 | 31% |
| China | 483 | 22% |
| France | 142 | 14% |
| Singapore | 134 | 13% |
| Spain | 138 | 11% |
| Australia | 234 | 9% |
| United States | 4,334 | 7% |
| Netherlands | 123 | 7% |
| Sweden | 138 | 5% |
| United Kingdom | 990 | 4% |
| Canada | 668 | 4% |
| Germany | 610 | 4% |
| Italy | 140 | 4% |
| Switzerland | 242 | 2% |
Email format at 75 universities
Every university with at least 20 confirmed addresses in our data. Percentages are the share of that university's addresses using each format. Formats with a number (like smith.12) are listed as "+ number".
| University | Country | Addresses | Most common | Second |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brown University | United States | 25 | firstname_lastname 72% | lastname 4% |
| Carnegie Mellon University | United States | 40 | flastname 38% | lastname 33% |
| Columbia University | United States | 29 | firstname.lastname 45% | flastname 24% |
| Cornell University | United States | 53 | firstname.lastname 32% | lastname 28% |
| Duke University | United States | 49 | firstname.lastname 84% | f.lastname 4% |
| Emory University | United States | 25 | flastname 44% | firstname.lastname 40% |
| EPFL | Switzerland | 41 | firstname.lastname 90% | lastname.firstname 5% |
| ETH Zurich | Switzerland | 86 | firstname.lastname 51% | flastname 20% |
| Georgetown University | United States | 25 | firstname.lastname 80% | lastnamef 8% |
| Georgia Institute of Technology | United States | 81 | firstname.lastname 49% | flastname + number 16% |
| Harvard University | United States | 257 | flastname 46% | firstname_lastname 18% |
| Heidelberg University | Germany | 23 | firstname.lastname 61% | lastname 26% |
| Imperial College London | United Kingdom | 147 | f.lastname 56% | firstname.lastname 22% |
| Johns Hopkins University | United States | 147 | flastname 36% | flastname + number 35% |
| Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | Germany | 26 | firstname.lastname 92% | lastname 4% |
| Karolinska Institutet | Sweden | 27 | firstname.lastname 78% | lastname.firstname 4% |
| King's College London | United Kingdom | 43 | firstname.lastname 93% | |
| London School of Economics | United Kingdom | 25 | f.lastname 48% | f.lastname + number 12% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | United States | 86 | flastname 48% | lastname 37% |
| McGill University | Canada | 31 | firstname.lastname 84% | f.lastname 3% |
| McMaster University | Canada | 33 | lastnamef 33% | lastname 15% |
| Michigan State University | United States | 20 | lastname 30% | lastnamef 30% |
| Monash University | Australia | 23 | firstname.lastname 83% | lastname.firstname 9% |
| Nanyang Technological University | Singapore | 24 | firstnamelastname 21% | firstname.lastname 21% |
| National University of Singapore | Singapore | 41 | firstname.lastname 17% | firstnamelastname 12% |
| New York University | United States | 34 | firstname.lastname 59% | flastname 18% |
| North Carolina State University | United States | 21 | flastname 48% | lastname 24% |
| Northwestern University | United States | 86 | firstname.lastname 38% | firstname-lastname 27% |
| Ohio State University | United States | 23 | lastname + number 91% | flastname 9% |
| Princeton University | United States | 82 | flastname 55% | lastname 27% |
| Purdue University | United States | 22 | lastname + number 32% | flastname 27% |
| Rutgers University | United States | 27 | firstname.lastname 56% | lastname 15% |
| Stanford University | United States | 157 | flastname 52% | lastname 24% |
| Technical University of Munich | Germany | 35 | firstname.lastname 66% | lastname 11% |
| Texas A&M University | United States | 25 | flastname 36% | firstname.lastname 32% |
| Tsinghua University | China | 55 | lastnamefirstname 25% | firstnamelastname 13% |
| University College London | United Kingdom | 57 | f.lastname 58% | firstname.lastname 23% |
| University of Alberta | Canada | 30 | flastname 30% | firstname.lastname 30% |
| University of Bonn | Germany | 20 | lastname 40% | flastname 25% |
| University of Bristol | United Kingdom | 20 | firstname.lastname 70% | f.lastname 20% |
| University of British Columbia | Canada | 42 | firstname.lastname 45% | flastname 29% |
| University of Calgary | Canada | 31 | flastname 48% | firstname.lastname 35% |
| University of California San Diego | United States | 123 | flastname 76% | lastname 4% |
| University of California, Berkeley | United States | 129 | flastname 45% | lastname 28% |
| University of California, Davis | United States | 38 | flastname 74% | lastname 5% |
| University of California, Los Angeles | United States | 167 | flastname 53% | lastname 19% |
| University of California, San Francisco | United States | 51 | firstname.lastname 84% | flastname 4% |
| University of Cambridge | United Kingdom | 33 | firstname.lastname 64% | f.lastname 18% |
| University of Chicago | United States | 77 | flastname 51% | lastname 26% |
| University of Copenhagen | Denmark | 23 | firstname.lastname 61% | flastname 17% |
| University of Edinburgh | United Kingdom | 28 | firstname.lastname 50% | f.lastname 18% |
| University of Florida | United States | 41 | flastname 34% | firstname.lastname 20% |
| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | United States | 69 | flastname 52% | lastname 13% |
| University of Manchester | United Kingdom | 45 | firstname.lastname 84% | firstname.lastname + number 4% |
| University of Maryland, Baltimore | United States | 21 | flastname 86% | flastname + number 5% |
| University of Maryland, College Park | United States | 45 | flastname 40% | lastname 22% |
| University of Melbourne | Australia | 27 | firstname.lastname 44% | flastname 37% |
| University of Michigan | United States | 94 | flastname 60% | lastname 17% |
| University of Minnesota | United States | 24 | flastname 29% | lastname 25% |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | United States | 47 | firstname_lastname 38% | flastname 26% |
| University of Oxford | United Kingdom | 259 | firstname.lastname 88% | lastname.firstname 4% |
| University of Pennsylvania | United States | 144 | flastname 28% | firstname.lastname 26% |
| University of Queensland | Australia | 21 | f.lastname 76% | firstname.lastname 24% |
| University of Rochester | United States | 22 | firstname_lastname 50% | firstname.lastname 18% |
| University of Sheffield | United Kingdom | 23 | f.lastname 43% | firstname.lastname 35% |
| University of Southern California | United States | 82 | flastname 43% | lastname 21% |
| University of Texas at Austin | United States | 35 | firstname.lastname 34% | lastname 26% |
| University of Toronto | Canada | 151 | firstname.lastname 65% | f.lastname 10% |
| University of Tübingen | Germany | 28 | firstname.lastname 79% | lastname 7% |
| University of Washington | United States | 110 | flastname 54% | lastname 20% |
| University of Waterloo | Canada | 26 | flastname 58% | firstname.lastname 31% |
| University of Wisconsin–Madison | United States | 38 | lastname 32% | flastname 29% |
| University of Zurich | Switzerland | 25 | firstname.lastname 76% | lastname 12% |
| Washington University in St. Louis | United States | 22 | flastname 36% | lastname 18% |
| Yale University | United States | 201 | firstname.lastname 91% | f.lastname 1% |
What this means when you cold email a professor
Don't guess in the US. At most American universities a guessed address is close to a coin flip. Find the real one first.
Look at their papers. The corresponding author line of a recent paper is the most reliable public source. It is where we found most of the addresses in this study.
Check the faculty page and ORCID. If a paper doesn't list it, the department page or the professor's ORCID profile often does.
If you must guess in Europe, use firstname.lastname. It is the best single bet, but still confirm it if you can. For what to write once you have the address, read how to email a professor about research.
Method
- Source. Email lookups ProfScout ran when students opened a professor's profile, collected through October 2026. 24,161 professors in total.
- What counts as confirmed. An address found on the corresponding author line of a paper (via Europe PMC, open-access full text or arXiv) or on the professor's ORCID record, and matched to the professor's name. Addresses we could only guess are not included. 9,798 professors (41%) had a confirmed address. 9,035 of those were university addresses and the rest personal.
- Format. Each address was compared to the professor's name from OpenAlex and labelled (for example
firstname.lastnameorflastname). About 89% matched a named format; the rest are counted as other. - Universities. Grouped by email domain, with department subdomains combined. Only universities with 20 or more addresses are listed. Hospitals and research institutes were left out.
- Limits. This is not a census. It covers professors that students chose to look up, who skew toward large research universities. Some addresses come from older papers and may no longer be in use.
- Privacy. We publish formats and percentages only, never individual addresses.
You may reuse these figures with a link to this page.