Potential students, postdocs, and visitors: please read the information below before contacting me. This information is being kept up-to-date to correctly reflect the current status of various openings in my group. Thank you for your interest!
Robotics at USC: USC has a great deal
of robotics research, largely, but
not exclusively, in the Computer Science
Department. For an overview of robotics activities,
look here. For more information
about any particular project or lab, please contact the relevant
faculty member or principal investigator directly, we do not have a
centralized claring house for getting involved.
PhD Students:
Each academic year I recruit (on average) one or two new students into
my Interaction Lab. I choose the students from the top accepted PhD
students in the Computer Science Department. Please
read about the
USC CS Department PhD program admissions process so you are
familiar with it before sending me email. After that, if you have
already applied to the program and are especially interested in my
lab, email me the URL to a web page showing your relevant research
(instead of sending materials as attachments).
I am often asked about accepting students in PhD programs outside of Computer Science. The short answer is that this is possible, but usually works only for fellowship students. For graduate research assistants, the PhD advisor is also the funder and the academic mentor, and thus it is best if s/he is in the same department as the student. However, exceptions are possible. After all, anything can happen!
Most importantly, I accept students who are interested in socially assistive robotics, my area of research focus.
If you are at USC already and interested in getting involved in
robotics research on a volunteer basis, you are encouraged to
review the CRES web site
and follow the guidelines found here. If you are
interested in working in my group specifically, email me, supplying
the materials listed here.
MS Students:
MS students in the CS Department are not typically funded by research
grants, are not permitted, per school policy, to be funded as GRAs
(graduate research assistants), and CS Department rules prohibit MS
students from soliciting faculty for funding. The same rule applies
to non-CS MS students. Only if you already have a strong background
in either
assistive robotics and/or activity
modeling, and/or have taken my CS 584
course and gotten an A in it, or have taken courses by Prof. Gaurav Sukhatme
and/or Prof. Stefan Schaal and gotten A's and are in the MSIR program,
then contact me by email. It is always best to put together a web page
showing your relevant research and send me (and other faculty you are
interested in) the URL instead of sending materials as
attachments. You can then be considered for a research position that would be paid on an hourly basis.
If you are interested in getting involved in robotics research on a
volunteer basis, you are encouraged to contact the relevant faculty
member directly. If you are interested in working in my group
specifically, email me, supplying the materials listed here.
Undergraduate Students:
My lab has a long history of welcoming undergraduate involvement in
research. Recently we had as many as 20 undergrads in the lab at
once. We expect 8-10 hours of work in the lab per week; less
is typically not viable in terms of actually getting involved in a
productive project.
Students with research funding are always welcome, such as Merit Research Scholars and URAP awardees. I am also happy to work with eligible students to apply for WiSE Undergraduate Research awards. Otherwise, undergraduates without experience in the Interaction Lab are accepted as volunteers.
All undergraduates are paired up with a PhD student and/or a postdoctoral fellow, for direct mentorship.
Interested students are encouraged to review the Interaction Lab Get Involved page and follow the steps outlined there.
Post Docs:
Currently, I do not have any funded postdoc positions available.
Therefore, only qualified individuals who would bring their own
funding can be considered.
Interested Volunteers:
If you are a student at USC at any level and are interested in getting
involved in the robotics research in my Interaction Lab on a volunteer
basis, you are encouraged to review the Interaction
Lab Get
Involved page and follow the steps outlined there.
Thank you for your interest in our research!