For Students

🤖 Joining the lab 🦔

Thanks for your interest in working with me! I am open to recruiting a postdoctoral fellow and/or a PhD student to join my group. More details below 👇

Postdoctoral fellows: I may have funding to host a postdoctoral fellow with flexible starting dates. here is no topic or project restriction to this position, but I hope to recruit someone only if we have a strong research fit; please email me if you are interested. More generally, I am also open to writing a grant/fellowship application together, but please reach out to me earlier (at least a year before the desired start date) if you’d like to pursue this option.

PhD students: I am broadly recruiting PhD students through Linguistics, Computer Science and the Center for Data Science every year unless there are special circumstances. If you mention my name in the application in any of these departments, I will read your application.

The Linguistics department will be a better fit for you if you are interested in scientific questions about language and/or broader Cognitive Science. If you are primarily interested in AI, I recommend applying to Computer Science (CS) or the Center for Computing & Data Sciences (CDS), depending on your curricular interests and maybe fit with other faculty in the respective departments.

I will also be recruiting through CS & CDS, but I am primarily interested in students who either have secondary interests in CogSci/Linguistics or students whose primary interests are in model evaluation. I typically do not work with students whose interests are machine learning/artificial intelligence more generally.

Application links:

Linguistics
Computer Science
Center for Computing & Data Science

Research opportunities for BU students

Undergrads: I typically ask undergraduate students to have taken & performed well in at least one of my advanced computational courses (i.e., non-intro) before discussing research opportunities, unless you already have prior research experiences. I try to agree to supervise undergraduate research very sparingly, but feel free to reach out if you do meet one of the criteria I mentioned.

MS students: I have limited availability for MS supervision. I might agree to collaborating in rare circumstances, but similarly to undergraduates I’ll typically only agree to work with students who have taken one of my non-intro classes.

PhD students who are not my advisees: Reach out to me and we can discuss more!

Recommendation letters

If you’ve worked with me in some capacity I’d be very happy to write you a recommendation letter. But for this I ask you to kindly do the following:

Email me: Even if I verbally agreed to do it, please email me to get the confirmation on record.
Give me at least 3 weeks: If the earliest deadline that I have to meet is less than three weeks away, I won’t be able to write you a letter.
Share your application materials and deadlines: If I agree to write you a letter, share your application materials (that is, whatever you’re submitting to the opportunity you’re asking the letter for) and the deadline/list of deadlines with me. If it’s not graduate school application, send me the description of the opportunity/event as well. The earlier the better! The deadlines should be in the first email you send. The application materials can come a bit later, but not something like the day before the earliest deadline. I understand if the material is in draft stage, but often just a work-in-progress draft helps a lot with letter writing.

Apologies in advance that I will have to decline requests that don’t follow the above instructions, and thanks for understanding!