Skip to content

Open Positions

I have multiple openings for Master students, PhD students, and remote student collaborators. I’m happy to host students who are excited to joint the exciting endeavor on LLMs, causality, and multi-agent systems. See my slides for the type of research that I can host projects on.

All forms are last checked on 3 Oct, so if you have not received an email from me, either check your spam box, or feel free to move on find other research mentors! In case the PhD application fee is expensive for your financial status, I do not recommend students who haven’t received an email reach-out from me to apply to me.

To respect both of our time, I will directly delete any email that shows that a candidate did not read this page carefully. In contrast, if you fill out the form with great detail and do not sound like ChatGPT, you always get a bonus in my impression of you.

PhD Students

I am continuously searching for EXCELLENT PhD students that want to work on the research areas highlighted in my main page.

Channel 1: PhD at the University of Toronto

I will look for several PhDs at the Department of Computer Science at UofT. You can apply in this upcoming cycle in Dec 2024. If you want some early signal of how I’d perceive your application, please feel free to fill in this pre-PhD check form. Individual professors have a large decision power in the PhD admission at UofT. Check out UToronto CS PhD application by Dec.

If you might apply for a PhD with me in a foreseeable future (i.e., at least one year from now), it will be an advantage if you have already worked with me. Check out the pre-PhD research form.

Channel 2: PhD via the ELLIS PhD program

As a CIFAR AI Chair, I am listed as an advisor in the ELLIS PhD program too. You can either directly apply to me as your ELLIS main supervisor, or contact me to be a co-supervisor if you are already admitted by a main supervisor. Check out the ELLIS PhD application by Nov 15.

Channel 3: PhD at Max Planck Institute with Prof Bernhard Schoelkopf, and co-supervised by me.

I will co-supervise students together with Prof Bernhard Schoelkopf, so you can directly apply to him and cc’/tag me mentioning that you are interested in co-supervision. Here are some channels to apply, such as the ELLIS PhD program.

Master’s/Undergrad Student Research

Channel 1: ETH students

For ETH Master students, I’m very interested in hosting Master Thesis, Semester Projects, and general research collaboration. Feel free to fill out this form. We can host you under me and one of my co-advisor (either Prof Bernhard Schoelkopf or Prof Mrinmaya Sachan). In special cases, strong ETH undergrad students can apply in the same way too.

Channel 2: Remote Research Mentees

I usually look for students who can devote 6 months to 2 years of time to work with me. You can be of any career stage, from anywhere on the earth. I have past experiences working with master/undergrad/gap-year student, and people who want to do research in their spare time regardless of the day job. Fill out this form.

Full-Time Interns

Channel 1: Full-time in-person internship at Max Planck Institute in Tuebingen

Check out the position info here and fill out this form. Bernhard and I can co-supervise you at our EI lab at Max Planck Institute, in Tuebingen, Germany. You can optionally choose to be an intern with us in person, or just remotely collaborate.

Channel 2: Full-time in-person internship at Vector Institute, Toronto, Canada

For people interested in in-person internships from and after Fall 2025, since I am also a faculty member of Vector Institute and CIFAR AI Chair, you can apply to me through the Vector Research Internships.

Tips

My philosophy of PhD recruiting

For my upcoming recruiting of PhDs, ideally I hope my lab to have students of diverse expertise: (1) one student experienced with ACL/NeurIPS-type publications, (2) one student very strong in coding, (3) one student with deep philosophical thoughts (with a background in phil/math/physics/etc) and interested in the philosophy of science, and (4) a student with expertise in stats who is either already fluent in or can quickly learn formal causal inference. Above all, I hope that all my students are kind and supportive of each other.

The main reason why I suggested pre-PhD research with me is that I can have a better prediction of how life will be with you as my PhD for four or five years. Everything is about what reliable and strong signals I can get when predicting the future many years with you. Such signals can be from your papers and recommendation letters when you apply, and can also be from direct interaction with you through a project.

What am I like as a supervisor?

Since a PhD is to devote 4+ years with the same advisor, you can feel free to chat with any of my past students (listed on my CV) to see how I am as a mentor.

Visa Issues and Collaboration Constraints

Since AI is listed as a sensitive technology, nowadays we have to conform with certain policies and regulations. If you are an individual from Iran, Russia, or China, (1) for remote student collaboration, I am not allowed to collaborate with anyone from the list of sensitive institutions; (2) for any channel that requires a Canadian student visa for you, please be aware of reported cases of student visa delay, especially from sensitive institutions; (2) for any channel that leads to a student visa in Germany, please check ASPI university tracker to see whether your institution will trigger a strong security check for a German visa.

To second-time applicants

If you or applying to me the second time or more, then the most important thing is to highlight your “growth / change” between your recent two applications. For example, you should have an annotated CV contrasting the difference of your old version and the new version (similar to a journal article revision). You can also write a google doc of any skill or experience differences when filling out corresponding answers in the application form. Regardless of whether you get it this time or not, I want to say kudos for your growth!

What if your application does not work out with me?

There are many fantastic opportunities out there as well! I recommend you to check out the research opportunities at the MATS program, and if you have general Korea planning questions, you are very welcome to join our ACL Year-Round Mentorship, for Zoom sessions and slack.