Open UAlbany CS PhD Positions in Chong Liu Lab (Fall 2026)
About me
I’m Chong Liu, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the State University of New York at Albany (UAlbany). I received my PhD in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2023 and spent one year as a Data Science Institute Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago.My work has been published in leading machine learning venues such as ICML, ICLR, AISTATS, UAI, JMLR, and JAIR, with two oral presentations at AAAI. I am an Area Chair of ICML 2025, ICLR 2026, AISTATS 2025, AISTATS 2026, Associate Editor of IEEE-TNNLS, and Editorial Board Reviewer of JMLR. I am the founding organizer of the workshop series on AI for Drug Discovery and Development (AI4D3) starting 2023.
My research interests are Machine Learning and AI for Science:
- Bayesian optimization
- Bandit algorithms
- Quantum machine learning
- AI for accelerated scientific discovery
What will I provide as a PhD advisor?
- Fully funded CS PhD positions.
- Comprehensive, patient, and responsible research training.
- Friendly study and research environment and abundant computing resources.
- Strong support for collaborations, internships, award nomination, job hunting, and career development.
What do I expect from you?
- Be responsible and stay self-motivated. They are essential for you PhD student to navigate the inherent uncertainty of research, enabling you to stay focused and achieve success.
- Be curious and be able to think in depth. Given a new idea that you are interested in, are you happy to dig into it?
- Math background (statistics, probability, linear algebra) and coding skills (programming languages and ML/AI developing tools).
- Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in computer science, or related areas.
- A first-author publication in one of these venues: ICML, NeurIPS, ICLR, JMLR, UAI, AISTATS, AAAI, IJCAI, AAMAS, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, WACV, BMVC, KDD, WSDM, ICDM.
Why UAlbany Computer Science?
- Founded in 1967, UAlbany CS has a rich history with two Turing Award laureates (an alumni and a faculty member).
- Current Computer Science faculty team is rapidly growing. 7 new faculty members joined the department within the past 3 years, including the new director of UAlbany AI Plus Institute. Overall the department has 7 NSF CAREER Award winners.
- AI research at UAlbany is going strong! In 2022, there was $75 million funding support from the New York State, specifically for AI research at UAlbany, to recruit 27 faculty members in AI and build a supercomputing center. By Aug. 2024, all 27 positions have been filled and I’m one of them. In Oct. 2023, UAlbany and IBM announced new $20 million AI research collaboration.
- Albany and its nearby region, known as the capital region, is now the research center of semiconductor and AI in the US with many collaboration and internship opportunities. In Aug. 2023, the prestigious Albany NanoTech Complex has officially returned to UAlbany CNSE, the home college of UAlbany CS. Also, IBM Research AI Hardware Center and GlobalFoundries Manufacturing Center are in capital region.
Why Albany, NY?
- As the capital city of the New York State, Albany is a mid-size city where you can enjoy both convenient city life and comfortable country life.
- Albany has a lot of living resources but low cost.
- It’s easy to travel from Albany. You can fly directly to all major cities in East Coast and Midwest in the US from Albany International Airport. After 2.5 hr by car or train, you can fly directly to most major cities in the world from New York City. Also, you can drive 2.5 hr to Boston, 3.5 hr to Montreal, 4.5 hr to Buffalo, or 6 hr to Toronto.
Join us!
Feel free to drop me an email to "cliu24 AT albany.edu" including the following information. Hope to see you in Albany!- Email title: "UAlbany CS PhD Application by [[YOUR_NAME]]".
- Your research interests in several sentences.
- Attach your CV, undergrad transcript, and a representative writing sample (paper/preprint if any).