For prospective PhD students

If you're reading this, you are probably interested in becoming a PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder and working with me and my research group. Thanks for your interest!

On this page, I try to provide useful information for people in your situation. Note that I will probably not respond to emails with resumes or requests for consideration as a student. I get many, many such inquiries and I cannot respond to them all. Put your effort into crafting an excellent application instead.

• Should I send you an email telling you about my great ideas and background? Generally, no. I get many such emails and tend not to read them or put much weight on them. Some students send many, many such emails to everyone in a particular field or school. I do not have the time to respond. You should put your effort into crafting an excellent official application. CU Boulder Graduate School application. The Information Science department deadline is usually the beginning of December for the following Fall quarter. The Computer Science department deadline is usually mid-December. (Specific deadlines for each year are posted here. I do advise students in both programs.

• Who decides who gets admitted in your department? Generally, this is a collective decision by the department, but a student that lacks an internal faculty champion for their case will most likely not be admitted. If you're interested in working with me, include my name on the application and in your personal statement, reference your specific interests and what you can contribute to the overall research program of my research group.

• Can I get funding? Generally, the department will not accept PhD students unless it has a way to fund them either through TAships or grant funding.

• Should I apply to Information Science or Computer Science? I can advise students in both departments, so this is decision is up to you and the kind of PhD experience you want to have and how you want to represent yourself and your work when you graduate. If you are unsure, one thing you can do to help decide is compare the PhD programs in Computer Science and Information Science and see which speaks to your aims as a researcher and scholar.

• How can I improve my chances of getting admitted? Advising a PhD student involves tremendous personal investment on my part. I am looking for PhD students that are very likely to be successful in working on the projects that I work on. You will need:

  • Excellent math and programming skills.
  • Very good to excellent communication skills.
  • Interest in and commitment to the topics of my research and related areas, especially algorithmic fairness, fairness-aware recommendation, and multistakeholder recommendation.