FORTIS Lab

FORTIS stands for Foundations Of Reliable and Trustworthy Intelligent Systems. Drawing on the Latin word fortis — “strong” or “resilient” — the FORTIS Lab develops AI systems that remain reliable under uncertainty, safe in complex environments, and scalable in real-world deployment. Our research spans two core dimensions: advancing the foundations of reliability and safety in modern AI models, and building open, scalable systems and scientific applications that translate these foundations into practical impact. This includes work on out-of-distribution and anomaly detection, LLM and agent safety, and graph and multimodal intelligence. Through open-source tools and interdisciplinary collaboration, FORTIS aims to deliver AI that is rigorous, dependable, and broadly beneficial to science and society.

1. PhD Openings and Application Guidelines I may recruit Ph.D. student for Fall 2027 -- however, this year is very different due to the funding constraints (see below). We also have openings for undergraduate and graduate interns all the time, both at USC and elsewhere (preferably in North America for time zone compatibility).

• Research Focus: Candidates should align with my core research areas. For details, please visit my research interests.
  Update (Jan 2026): For Fall 2026, due to funding reasons, my lab will rely on fellowship offers but no RA offers (which require an impossible amount of funding). Thus, this year we can only recommend candidates for fellowship but the fellowship committee will make the final decision. This requires applicants to have high GPAs (3.7+) and reasonably good English test scores (TOEFL 100+) for committee review.
• Prerequisites for Ph.D.: Successful candidates typically have:
  • Multiple published, relevant top-tier publications in ML (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR), Systems (e.g., MLSys, VLDB, OSDI), or LLMs (ACL, EMNLP, NAACL). This list is not exhaustive.
  • Strong programming skills, demonstrated through research projects or significant open-source contributions.
• Prerequisites for Research Interns: Successful candidates typically have:
  • At least one top-tier publication in ML (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR), Systems (e.g., MLSys, VLDB, OSDI), or LLMs (ACL, EMNLP, NAACL). This list is not exhaustive.
  • Strong programming skills, demonstrated through research projects or significant open-source contributions.
  • I do not have any summer interns -- I am also enjoying summer for fun :)

2. Email for Connection and Form Submission - For all positions, please fill out this Google Form: Application Form and also email the following details (subject line: "Interested in PhD/Intern at Fall 26"): Magic Words to fortis@usc.edu - please include Trojan in the email title to demonstrate that you have read these instructions carefully.

• CV: Provide a concise summary of your background and your future plans.
• Why FORTIS?: Mention any of my research papers or topics that have caught your interest. Additionally, feel free to propose new topics you are interested in exploring. I am always open to innovative ideas and fresh perspectives.

3. Compensation. Ph.D. students will receive the full support (tuition waiver + stipend is $40,000 in 2024-25) outlined by the CS department. TA is always guaranteed, and we will try to give you as many RA as possible. We do not have paid opportunities for undergraduate and master RA; it is not allowed to pay remote interns at USC :( Please consider this before reaching out.

4.1. GPU Clusters. In November 2023, we deployed fortis-prima, a high-performance GPU server equipped with dual AMD EPYC 7763 ("Milan") CPUs, 1TB DDR4 memory (64×16GB), 15TB SSD storage, and 8× NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPUs (released Q4 2022; up to 1.5× faster than the previous A6000 Ampere). In Fall 2025, we are deploying fortis-nova, a second GPU server with support for 8× NVIDIA RTX 6000 Blackwell Max-Q GPUs (96GB each, released in 2025). It will launch with 4 GPUs installed, and the remaining 4 will be added in 2026/27 to complete the full 8-GPU configuration.

4.2. Cloud Credits. We recently (Aug 2024) get $20,000 AWS credit; thank you, Amazon. We also get generous computing credits from NSF :)