PhD Students

Our group is always looking for highly motivated PhD students and I am looking forward to recruiting a couple of new students in 2024. If you are interested, I encourage you to apply to the PhD program at the Allen School at the University of Washington and mention my name in your application.

Note: Our program is highly competitive and admissions decisions are ultimately made by a committee. I understand the effort that goes into the application process and I cannot evaluate the chances of a student getting in. For these reasons, I am uncomfortable directly encouraging anyone to apply to the program. If you want to know if I'm recruiting this year (2024) the answer is YES! If you have any other questions about the logistics of the application process, we have a very responsive team of advising staff who can help. They can be reached at grad-admissions@cs.washington.edu.

Here is some advice if you’re interested in my group:

Q: How can I increase my changes of you seeing my application?

A: Emails can be missed, so don't solely rely on them or feel disheartened if you don't get a reply. The key is to mention my name in your application. A small tip: ensure "Schulz" is spelled without a "t"—our search engine struggles with misspellings!

Q: Should I just mention your name or lab in my application?

A: Definitely mention more than just my name or lab! Listing multiple faculty broadens your chances, potentially sparking more interest in your work or opening doors to co-advising opportunities. While I do have specific co-advising preferences yearly, I'm open to collaborations I hadn't initially considered.

Q: Do you have particular projects in mind for incoming students in 2024?

A: While I have a range of interests, I'm especially excited about projects that merge Machine Learning (ML) and Programming Languages (PL) to create cutting-edge design tools. Even though AI has transformed many areas of design, its impact on manufacturing design isn't as strong. The big challenge? Balancing creative design with practical and functional considerations. I envision tools that mix AI techniques with structured design logic. Imagine viewing CAD designs as programs: this combines the best of AI and traditional programming approaches. The goal is to blend the precision of engineering methods with AI's power, drawing from vast past experiences to enhance automated design creation and refinement.

Q: Are you planning to recruit students to co-advise next year (2024)?

A: Absolutely! I have a passion for co-advising. I'll be actively seeking one student to co-advise in collaboration with Jen Mankoff and another student to co-advise alongside Gilbert Bernstein. However, I'm generally keen on collaborations. I'm part of GRAIL, where we are always eager to co-advise students as well as our an excellent PL team, Fabrication team, and Robotics team that I frequently collaborate with.

Undergraduate students

I am excited to work with undergrads, but in my experience, undergraduates are successful when paired with grad students who can mentor them directly. I encourage all of my PhD students and Post-docs to work with highly-motivated undergrads so if you are interested in my lab, please contact one of my students directly to see if there’s a good match for you! Doing exceptionally well in CSE 457 is not a prerequisite to joining my group, though highly encouraged.

Post-docs

Postdoc positions are very limited, but if you are interested in a position please email me directly.