University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA, USAOpenings and Timeline for PhD Offer. I am peacefully looking for Ph.D. student (from Fall 25) and interns (no earlier than Fall 2024). I prepared a procedure on the USC CS Ph.D. offer process and funding.
Personal Views on PhD. Even the lab is named ASAP (credit to Xiyang Hu), I am very relaxed. Doing a PhD and conducting research is just a job. Doing ok jobs and being an average person is excellent. My life has been happy: I have supportive parents and partner, and I do not need to use work/career to prove anything :)
Email for Connection - Please email the following (subject line: "Interested in {position, e.g., Ph.D.} at {expected time, e.g., Fall 25}"): Magic Words please add Trojan in the email title to show you read this carefully.
General Expectations. Strong programming is essential as our work revolves around ML Systems and open-source ML. A solid foundation in statistics and mathematics will be a significant plus. Don't fear making mistakes; they're a part of the learning curve in both research and life.
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.
GPU Clusters. We recently (Nov 2023) bought a new GPU server with AMD EPYC Milan 7763, 64x16=1TB DDR4 memory, 15 TB SSD, 6x NVIDIA RTX A6000 Ada (released Dec 2022; 1.5x faster than A6000). We plan to buy a second GPU server in Fall 2024.
Cloud Credits. We recently (Mar 2024) get more than 5,000 GPU hours on A100 and equivalent from NSF and Google.
Our Team (Alphabetical by last name; more to add)
Connect with them: many of the Master RA are looking for Ph.D./full time job for Fall 2024/2025 -- please reach out to them (or me for an intro).