Working with me

Thanks for your interest in working with me! If you’re already a full-time researcher, I’m happy to chat about potential collaborations; please reach out directly.

Note: I’ll be at Amazon in Fall 2025 and may not be able to take any students during that time.

If you’re an undergraduate or master’s student at UMass, I may be able to supervise you on a project (though likely not an independent study right now). Here’s how I typically work:

  • I don’t generally add undergraduate or master’s students to late-stage projects, as getting a new collaborator up to speed usually slows down the project. If we work together, it will likely be on a new project that you lead, which gives you a better shot at being first author.
  • We can develop a project idea together, or we can start from an idea you bring after some initial literature review. If you don’t have an idea yet, that’s fine; I have plenty to share.
  • My involvement is as a mentor, not a co-lead. I’ll help shape the project, meet with you regularly (at least once a week), and give you frequent feedback on your work and writing, but I expect you to own execution and most of the writing.
  • If there are multiple strong candidates for working with me, I may recommend that you work on a shared project with one other person. In that case, the plan is co-first authorship, provided you both contribute at a co-first level and understand all major parts of the project, and we’ll have weekly group meetings plus shorter 1:1s every 2–3 weeks.
  • Every project starts with an aggressive timeline: aiming for submission to a conference or arXiv within about four months. The goal is to keep scope focused, have honest monthly check-ins about progress, and make sure expectations are clear. If, over a couple of months, we consistently miss reasonable goals even after adjusting them, I’ll usually recommend ending or restructuring the collaboration so neither of us is quietly dragging around a project we don’t have time for. I expect the timeline to be achievable with about 15-20 hours of solid work per week (roughly two moderate courses), and we’ll adjust as needed.
  • To hit this timeline, I strongly encourage using AI tools at many stages (literature search, coding, drafting), as long as you fully understand the work and can defend its correctness. You’ll still need to follow your courses’ academic integrity policies if you use any part of the work in class assignments, and you’ll need to elicit and cite sources from the AI carefully to avoid plagiarism.

If you’re still interested, please reach out and include:

  • your time availability this semester (conservative estimate of weekly hours and any constraints)
  • one time you had to finish a project faster than you expected and what you learned from it
  • your research interests and any relevant coursework or projects (none is fine)
  • your resume

I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to supervise or reply quickly, especially during busy periods, but I do read these carefully and I’ll get back to you if it seems like there’s a good mutual fit.