I am seeking Ph.D. students with a strong background and/or interest in system research, especially around data systems. Given the interdisciplinary nature of my work, students with experience in programming languages and machine learning are also encouraged to apply. Please follow the instructions here to submit an applicaiton. Note that the UTCS information on www.applytexas.org may be outdated. So when asked about choosing a research area, "databases" may not be in the options. In that case, please choose a nearest research area, which will not impact the application.

At UTCS, a Ph.D. application will be reviewed by the CS department and individual professors who express interest in the application. I evaluate applications based on four factors:

Curiosity. I believe an outstanding Ph.D. student will always ask questions about their and others’ research and set out to answer these questions, driven by their innate curiosity rather than their advisor. For example, it is common to encounter an unexpected experiment result, in which case the student will try to unravel its intricacies by repeatedly asking and answering many mini-questions, leading to the final answer.

Resilience. Conducting research is inherently challenging as we will venture into uncharted territories and do things that nobody has done. Consequently, encountering hurdles and difficulties, such as bad experimental results or negative reviews, is inevitable. In my opinion, a successful Ph.D. student should quickly recover from such setbacks and find ways to overcome them. Of course, talking to one's advisor is always helpful in these situations.

Communication. Good communication skills are crucial to a successful Ph.D. career. While communication skills will be trained throughout the Ph.D. program, I expect prospective students can communicate their ideas clearly and logically about the things they are familiar with, such as the projects they have worked on or basic CS concepts.

Engineering. Being system researchers, substantiating the effectiveness of our research ideas requires building a software system from scratch or implementing these ideas in an existing system, which requires a significant amount of engineering effort. I hope my students have the courage to tackle non-trivial engineering challenges and are willing to refine their engineering skills in the process.