Open Position Announcement

InDexLab has openings for a few PhD students. I am also willing to supervise up to 2 (unpaid) master's student, and up to 2 (unpaid) undergrad student. Please read the following requirements carefully and if you're qualified and interested, email your CV (only in PDF format) to asudeh[AT]uic.edu with the proper subject:

(i) current students: "UIC Student Interested to Join"

(ii) future students: "PhD Applicant Interested to Join"

Research Focus:
Our research spans to different aspects of Big Data and Data Science, including data management, analytics, and mining, for which we aim to find efficient, accurate, and scalable algorithmic solutions. Responsible data science and algorithmic fairness is our current research focus. We also work on projects related to ranking and representatives, data management for ML, web databases, social networks, knowledge graphs, computational fact checking, etc. Please refer to our projects and publications for more info.
Theory v.s. Application:
Our research is in the intersection of theory and applcation. Some projects are more theory-heavy and some application-oriented. In all projects, in addition to novelty, both technical depth (theory) and motivation (applcation) are important and should be considered. To give you an idea, the following sketch shows the distribution of some of our research between theory and application.

Theory v.s. Application

I suggest you read my blog post about "Enabling Responsible Data Science in Practice".
 
Research Theme:
I believe that brainstorming is the key to solving problems and that "good" research is teamwork, in opposed to individuals' effort. To achieve this, I constantly look to hire enthusiastic students to build a strong collaborative team. My theme for the research teams is as following:
  • Project Lead: The main student (the first name in the list of authors): responsible for moving the project ahead, organizing the meetings, coming up with ideas/solutions, conducting the experiments, and the (first draft of) writing.
  • Another student: helping the project lead. The two students will meet several times a week and brainstorm about the project, getting ready for the weekly team meetings.
  • Internal/External Collaborator: a faculty or a senior researcher.
  • Advisor: I will be the advisor.
  • Additional members: as needed.
 
PhD Students/Applicants:
I maintain a collection of interesting problems we discover as we do research. I understand that problem identification needs a lot of experience, which usually is beyond the expertise of fresh grad students. I consider it my responsibility to come up with projects that are of the interest of the lead student. Next is team formation: junior students will have a mentor (usually a senior student) to help them in the project they lead. Besides, there will be (at least) another collaborator (an internal or external faculty or researcher) to help expand the visibility and the network of the student. We will have weekly team meetings within which we will brainstorm about the project. I expect following this method, an enthusiastic student will have a productive and happy academic life, which is my goal.
Requirements for PhD Students:
  • You must be already a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  • You need to email me your resume or (better) to stop by my office for futher discussions.
Requirements for PhD Applicants:
  • You must have an undergraduate degree or be graduating from your current institution within the next 9 months.
  • You must have a strong background in algorithms and data science. You also need to have outstanding programming skills.
  • You need to email me your resume, standardized test scores (TOEFL and GRE), undergraduate transcript (plus Masters transcript if applicable), and a short statement of your research interests (not more than one page).

*** Note: If I find you a good fit for this position, I will try my best to support your PhD application. However, final decisions on your admission to the University of Illinois at Chicago will be made by the admission committee.

 
Master (and Undergrad) Students:
A major step in the pipeline of research is to transform research results into useful tools. Although this will be less research-heavy, it, still, will require a good amount of engineering and development. I expect the results to be (at least) in the form of demonstrating applications of the research papers -- known as demos. You will be responsible for the development of these tools (with the help of me and (possibly) a PhD student). While there often will be a demo made based on an already published research paper, sometimes we will implement preliminary demos to envision a major future project. Either way, I expect there will be at least one demo submission for each project, which (at least) will be a strong component of your CV.
Requirements for Master (and Undergrad) Students:
  • You must be already a student at University of Illinois at Chicago.
  • You must enrol in the corresponding project/thesis for undergraduate/masters under my supervisoin.
  • You need to send me your resume as well as your transcript.