Prospective Students

Thank you for your interest in my research and my group at UC San Diego! I am actively recruiting self-motivated PhD students, postdocs, research interns, and visiting scholars. I normally take 2 - 3 new PhD students every year. I plan to hire 1 - 2 postdocs in Fall 2023. My group also have multiple openings for visiting scholars and research interns.

If you are interested in joining my group, I'd recommend that you first fill out this form, and feel free to drop me an email after that.

Below are some helpful hints about how to apply to the related PhD programs at UCSD and how to get in touch with me.

Prospective PhD Students

• You may apply to UCSD HDSI, CSE, ECE, or other departments and select my name on your application.
• For PhD applicants of CSE and other departments (e.g., Math, ECE, CogSci), you may mark your preference on your UC San Diego Graduate Application by:
  • Marking "YES" to the question: "Are you interested in pursuing graduate work in a Data Science-related subject?"
  • Clicking the YES option pushes your application to HDSI faculty for consideration as a graduate student.
• Please express your interest in working with me in your personal statement.
• I am happy to receive emails from prospective PhD students, and I will careful read all of them, though I am unable to respond to them all. It'd be good if you could fill out this form before dropping me an email so I can get to know you and see if we are a good match. Thank you!

Prospective postdocs

I am actively seeking postdocs who have completed (or are expected to complete soon) their PhD. Applicants are expected to have strong research or engineering experiences in distributed systems, machine learning (deep learning), security, or other related fields. Please fill out this form and drop me an email!

Current or admitted UCSD undergrad/MS students

• I am happy to advise research projects in large-scale machine learning, distributed systems, security, ML applications, or other related areas.
• I also welcome open-source enthusiasts to join my group and join the development of several ongoing open-source projects.
• Students are expected to be highly self-motivated, have relevant research or engineering experiences or strong math/ML background, and be able to devote significant time on the projects.
• If you think you might be a good match, please fill out this form and send me an email.

Visiting scholars / research interns

My group has openings for visiting scholars (graduate/undergrad students, etc) with external funding. Visitors are expected to stay for at least 3 months and preferably 6-12 months. Please fill out this form and make sure you indicate the anticipated start and end time (Q8 and Q9) working with me.