hiring

Join the Princeton RL group!

I’d especially encourage prospective students/postdocs from historically underrepresented groups to reach out, even if you feel you might be unqualified or unprepared, and even if you’d just like to chat about whether you should apply. This is to calibrate for the fact that students from overrepresented groups are much more likely to apply [1, 2, 3]. All are welcome to apply!

• MS/PhD applicants: Apply to the Princeton MS and PhD programs through the department. Mention my name in your application if you’re interested in working together. Don’t email me reminders to look at your packet; rest assured that I will review every packet that mentions my last name. Useful resources:
  • Workshops on navigating the application process
  • Fee Waivers are available for many students.
  • Pre-application mentoring (scroll to bottom). Check out similar programs at other schools.
• Incoming Princeton PhD & MS students: If you’re an existing Princeton MS/PhD student interested in working together, send me an email.
• Princeton Undergrads: If interested in independent research, email me after taking either my graduate RL seminar or the advanced undergraduate RL course (coming Spring 2024).
• Postdocs: I am especially interested in working with a postdoc on (1) large-scale unsupervised RL, (2) connections between unsupervised RL (e.g., contrastive representations) and neuroscience (e.g., grid cells), and (3) applications of RL to synthesis problems in science/engineering. Funding for postdocs is currently limited, so I’d encourage prospective postdocs to apply for the Princeton Presidential Fellowship, the CSML Postdoc Fellowship, the PLI Postdoc Fellowship, or external postdoc fellowships. Apply by emailing me, including a resume, a few paragraphs about what you’d like to work on, and what fellowship[s] you plan to apply to (I can usually write a letter of support for these).
• External/visiting students: Want to spend 4 – 6 months doing research here at Princeton? Apply by emailing me with a paragraph about what you’d like to work on.
• High school students: I don’t work with high school students. Check out Princeton AI4All.

Tips:

• I am especially interested in recruiting students/postdocs in the following areas. If applicable, mention it in your application.
  • Experience in synthesis problems in chemistry (e.g., retrosynthesis), biology (e.g., lineage tracing, trajectory inference), or other scientific disciplines;
  • Experience with large-scale computer systems; or
  • Come from non-traditional/underrepresented backgrounds, including (but not limited to) students from low-income backgrounds and those who have worked for several years after their undergraduate.
• Make sure to mention why my lab would be a good fit. One good way to do this is to identify a bug in the code or proofs of a previous paper.