PhD and Postdoc Recruiting


Important message for potential researchers wanting to join our lab. Please read everything on this page before applying.

There may be a position for one or more outstanding applicants in 2018. You may also qualify for an international scholarship through RMIT, or an APA through the Australian government for PhD studies. Both are very competitive, but possible to get if you have a strong research track record. If a student qualifies for either an IPRS, or an APA, additional funding for top-up scholarships and travel funding may be available. Please contact me with the information requested below for further information.

Key Selection Criteria

Must have one of the four:

  1. A first class honours degree in Computer Science (or closely related field such as Mathematics / Electrical Engineering) from an Australian University;
  2. Rank in the top 10% in your class and attend a decent national university;
  3. Rank in the top 1/3 of your class and attend a Top 50 university by world standards (CMU, ANU, Tsinghua, etc); or
  4. A publication in one of the following venues: SIGIR, WSDM, SIGMOD, PVLDB, ICDE, CIKM, WWW, SIGKDD, OSDI, ACL, NAACL, COLING, SOSP, EUROSYS, ALENEX, DCC, ESA, SPIRE, ECIR, ADCS, TOIS, TKDE, IPM, IRJ.

In addition, having one or more of the following will greatly increase your chance of success:

  1. A personal recommendation from someone I know, or a well respected research leader in a closely related field;
  2. Prizes or awards from significant Mathematics/CS competitions such as the Math Olympiad or the ACM Programming Contest; and/or
  3. Outstanding programming ability as evidenced by a history of open source contributions through GitHub or other means.

How To Apply

If you are interested in being my student or working in the lab please send me an email containing the following items:

  1. A CV including your GPA, department ranking, peer reviewed publications, and English test results if applicable.
  2. A complete copy of your undergraduate / graduate transcripts.
  3. A brief email outlining how your current research interests align closely with my group's interests. Hint: If your area of research does not match any of my publications (which you are strongly encouraged to look at before emailing me), our interests probably do not overlap, and therefore I'm not the right person to be supervising your thesis.

Keep the email short and try to address the key selection criteria. International scholarships are extremely competitive in Australia and we routinely get many inquiries each week. Therefore, I only have time to respond to requests that quickly convince me that you are qualified and serious about a research position.

Unfortunately, I no longer supervise self-funded or part-time PhD students. If you are in this position, I'd suggest you enroll as an Honour's or MS Minor Thesis student first in order to explore research options within the group.





Last Update: 30 December 2017