Information for prospective PhD students

I am actively seeking 1-2 PhD students to join my lab for the Fall 2026 intake.

Please read the following points carefully before applying:

• ⚠️ Gates Funding Deadline (US citizens): The deadline for the Gates Cambridge Scholarship for students who are US citizens is on 15 October 2025.
• Department of Engineering: I am a member of the Department of Engineering. If you apply to the Department of Computer Science and Technology or another department, I will not be able to access your application. Please use the correct application link.
• Reference Letters: Unlike many universities in the US, it is critical that all of your reference letters are uploaded by the application deadline. Incomplete applications, including those with late letters, will likely make you ineligible for key funding opportunities. Please ensure your referees are aware of this. The deadline is 2 December 2025.

Research Focus

The primary goal of my lab is to build world models that can capture the physical structure of the world from image and video observations and enable complex physical reasoning. While I am open to a broad range of ideas within this domain, I am particularly interested in students keen to explore topics such as:

• Physical inductive biases for world models
• Robust and explainable inference and reasoning with generative models
• Control and interpretability of large generative models

If your interests align with this research direction, I encourage you to apply and mention my name in your application.