Prospective students

From now on, the high priority of the lab student recruitment will be given to students who successfully collaborated with me, received strong references from faculties in related fields, or demonstrated a strong publication record. If you are not from one of these criteria, I would recommend trying the 1st option with me if you are indeed interested in our research rather than unsolicitedly inquiry. Before starting a collaboration on graphics research, I would presume you to have implemented a basic real-time rasterized rendering or your own ray tracer.

Your role as a PhD student

A PhD career is not just a "study" or "education": it is a professional training that can open up so many otherwise impossible doors of your future upon graduation. That said, it is probably the most rewarding training that you do not even pay for but instead receiving a stipend. However, that also means your behaviors and performance are not just on your own, but a lab, a department, and a university. In order to have you a successful PhD career, or at least a sustainable match to my lab, here are the policies that you need to know ahead and follow.

Research Progress

At NYU Tandon, your first year will either be covered by the school's fellowship or RA. However, that does NOT indicate I will be your permanent advisor or you are already a PhD candidate (before you can pass your research qualification exam). The purpose of the beginning year is to do research with me (or others) with the goal of finding your permanent advisor or deciding whether you can fit into the PhD program. In effect, it’s a time for both you and me to decide whether we can work effectively together towards your first top venue publication thus along your entire PhD (if you can make it). Supposedly, you already have some domain knowledge to dive immediately into interesting research projects. By the end of the first semester or year, you should aim to make sufficient progress on a research project that passes my threshold for submission to a top international publication venue. Whether it gets accepted is out of my control. I will also take full responsibility if the idea goes to a dead-end which is very common as the nature and actual fun of research. However, the aim is to assess your passion, persistence, work ethic, and curiosity. If you miss any of these, deciding NOT to pursue a PhD as early as possible would actually be beneficial to your longer-term career and life: you will get 10X pay and 10% workload by directly getting to the (hot) computer industry with a bachelors or masters. A successful PhD grad in my lab is expected to publish 3-4 top venue papers to form up a thesis to be eligible for the degree.

Work Ethics

Again, as a PhD student, you conduct research for your passion, your future career dream, contributing to the whole society/humanity. That is, you work for yourself other than passively receiving education credits and get a degree (you will not if you think so). It can be one of the most rewarding careers, but it will not be enjoyable (and you will not be successful) if you are not passionate or proactive about it. This is so much EASIER to say/sell/promise to me, but you should ask your own heart whether you can dedicate your time by working so hard to advance the science, make the world better, and eventually earn your PhD. To me, these are for fun than taking duties/burdens. It is also important for you to maintain your work-life balance to remain satisfied with your mental/physical health especially during such unique time, e.g., hanging out with friends, developing your personal hobbies, etc. But it doesn't mean that you usually just pretend to sit in the lab yet have your brain empty thinking about your night video games/films, weekend plans, or how to deal with the next progress reporting to me. Comparing someone who considers research as their 24x7 fun hobbies vs. someone who treats a PhD as a 9-5 job that they just want to pass the "minimal requirement." I don't see the possibility that the latter type can succeed. Personally, I really happily enjoyed every single day in my grad school when I explored so many fun researches with top researchers. Also, I don't care at all if you comment on me as being "pushy" or "harsh" among peers. All I care about is whether I can help you academically succeed toward becoming a reputable and independent researcher through a mentor-mentee professional relationship.

Internships

I am fully supportive of the lab's students doing summer research internships. But that is for research internships only which contribute to your research theme, publication records, and research community connections. I do NOT support engineering internship which is for money/return offers; you will have plenty opportunities for these after your graduation. I come from industrial research before joining academia. So, I have seen the reality in the frontline labs: due to the fierce competition in applying for top labs (e.g., NVIDIA Research, Adobe Research, FRL, etc.), researchers usually expect the intern candidate to have a strong publication record in tier 1 venues before hiring them, to ensure project success. Usually, I selected 1 intern out of ~100 applicants. So your opportunity of getting the supported research internship is also entirely dependent on how early you can publish your first top-tier paper.

Credits: Some of the policies are inherited from Wojciech Jarosz @ Dartmouth.