Thank you for your interest in my group!
PhD Students
I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be joining Brown University in 2025! If you're interested in working with me, you should definitely apply to Brown!
Brown has an amazing history in computer graphics research. They even have the longest-running graphics course around! It's also a perfect place for interdisciplinary research in design for manufacturing, with RISD just next door and lots of collaborators in the Brown Visual Computing group (BVC) and the fantastic Programming Languages Team (PLT). I can't wait to connect with the Brown team and start new collaborations with the incredible researchers there.
I believe the best way to initiate new collaborations is through co-advising students. Therefore, my primary focus this year is on recruiting students interested in co-advising and who are enthusiastic about helping me build new bridges at Brown.
One of the coolest connections at Brown is obviously with Daniel Ritchie. My recent work, blending formal reasoning with machine learning to solve fabrication problems, lines up perfectly with his expertise. I believe we're on the brink of a new shift in design for manufacturing with computational tools that support the design process itself. Design for manufacturing is this paradoxical process that requires both creative exploration of past ideas and examples and analytical skills to ensure constraints and optimization. The neurosymbolic direction is the right way to tackle these challenges, and Daniel is the leading expert in neurosymbolic reasoning for computer graphics. Together, our co-advising team offers an unbeatable opportunity for students in this area! Another fun opportunity at BVC is to work with James Tompkin on projects that mix perception, reverse engineering, and design for manufacturing. Manufacturing defines how objects appear in the real world and can be used to model perception and tackle computer vision problems. I'd be excited to explore these questions with James, who has some interesting experiences in fabrication himself.
I'm also really excited to work with PL students. My past experiences co-advising PL students with Zach Tatlock and Ras Bodik at UW have been incredibly rewarding, and I'm looking forward to continuing this at Brown. I'd love to collaborate with Shriram Krishnamurthi on connecting design and formal methods concepts related to explainability—like, can we build a formal model describing how a CAD model can change? Can we use counter-example guidance to show users how different design procedures affect the final model? Plus, I'm super excited that Will Crichton will be joining Brown too! I can't wait to work with him on questions related to the semantics of design programs for manufacturing. How do you define equivalence when something's going to be 3D printed, for example? These are broader PL questions that get really interesting when you can't think of objects as abstractly as we usually do.
These are just some examples, but you should definitely check out the whole BVC group—there are so many cool opportunities to collaborate! And more broadly, there are exciting possibilities in other domains like robotics and security. If you have a fun research idea that could connect my work with anyone at Brown, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please reach out!
Due to the high volume of emails I receive from prospective students, please include "WORKWITHYOUATBROWN" in the subject line of your email. This indicates that you have read this message and are genuinely interested in working with me, rather than broadly emailing all faculty members at UW. (Make sure to copy and paste exactly as shown for my automatic filter to recognize it.)
Just a heads-up: I won’t be able to help with your application or give you feedback on your chances of being accepted. Please don't interpret a response (or lack thereof) to your email as any indication of your chances of success. In general, it's best to send out an email after you submit an application since that's when I will have more dedicated time to focus on admissions. I know the application process can be jarring and expensive, so I encourage you to reach out to other resources that can help. WiGRAPH has awesome resources on how to apply, and here's a link for application fee waivers at Brown.
Undergraduate students
I have a couple of cool projects this year (2024-2025) that I am excited to work on with UW undergrads. If you're interested, please reach out. I am also looking forward to working with Brown undergrads in the future.
Post-docs
Postdoc positions are very limited, but if you are interested in a position please email me directly.