Note to prospective interns and students

Update: There are currently no openings in my lab. I will not be responding to emails about joining my lab.


Earlier note (for reference):

I continue to be excited about the research directions my lab has been pursuing in the last few years. But I am also quite excited about the AI for Creativity space. So if you’re interested in pursuing AI for Creativity projects, I am especially excited to hear from you. Regardless, I am always excited to hear from awesome people :)

This may sound a bit excessive to some. But I get a lot of emails, many of which are very similar to each other. This is an attempt to extract some useful signal from your email so your effort in writing to me is not entirely wasted.

What I look for in a student

If you believe you have all of the above, and are interested in working with me, please send me an email in the following format. Please keep your email as succinct as possible.

  1. Subject: [position] [time], where [position] = MS, Ph.D., intern, etc., [time] = Fall 20xx, Spring 20xx, May-December 20xx, etc.
  2. 2-3 sentence description (total <100 words) of any past experience that is relevant to my lab or AI for Creativity.
  3. 2-3 sentence description (total <100 words) of topics or projects that you are interested in working on going forward
  4. Link to your github page
  5. Links to any of your code repositories that you believe are significant and done well
  6. Links to sample outputs from relevant past projects (especially if relevant to AI for Creativity)
  7. Link to your webpage
  8. Link to your CV
  9. List three highlights from your personal or professional background – past experiences, projects, GPA, past institution, past mentors/advisors – anything you believe I should make sure I don’t miss
  10. What do you believe is your biggest strength? What percentile would you place yourself at in this regard amongst your peers?
  11. What do you believe is your biggest weakness? What percentile would you place yourself at in this regard amongst your peers?
  12. In what way have you improved the most in the last year? How?
  13. Along what weakness have you not improved but you think that’s fine / is low priority, and why?

If I see a good potential match, I will follow up with further details about the interview process.

Thank you for your interest!

Webpage design courtesy Abhishek Das.