We believe research opportunities should be open and transparent. They should not dependent on insider knowledge or opaque application processes. Our goal is to support as many students as we sustainably can, so students interested in joining the lab will begin through various onboarding activities (see below).
If you are interested in joining the AIEA Lab, you are welcome to complete the lab interest form and you will receive an email from us shortly. We examine new applicants at the start of each academic quarter (excluding summer).
For the 2025-2026 academic year, due to the group size and uncertainty of research funds, we are not recruiting PhD students.
Current UCSC Master’s students interested in gaining research experience or looking for a supervisor for a research project should examine the active projects and identify a potential research fit. You will need to take an independent study and define a syllabus and expectations for the project.
MS students in the AIEA group can either do a capstone project (which will take approximately 2-3 quarters), or a thesis (which will take at least 1 year). MS students in the AIEA group are expected to to advise and mentor 1-2 undergraduate students.
In your introductory email, please include a CV/resume, and indicate a few topics or application domains of interest. You will propose your own project for an independent study based on this template. We’ve listed a couple ongoing projects on the UCSC CSE master’s board.
We have a structured initiative to onboard new prospective members to the lab: the AIEA Lab Auditor program. You can read more about it here. Through this program, you will need to enroll in CMPM 118.
The expected commitment is ~10 hours per week where you will learn about:
You can read more about the projects. You can learn more about this program by joining our prospective undergraduate mailing list.
The AIEA Lab takes on several high school students that are affiliated with the following programs:
If you are not accepted to one of these programs, we may be able to offer a structured, volunteer-based opportunity for high school students over the summer that want to work on either (1) independent projects or (2) learn through some of my labs existing projects. You can learn more about this by requesting to join our prospective intern mailing list or our intern Discord server.
If you or your advisor have an existing connection to the AIEA Lab’s research community, e.g.,through XAI, AI safety, neurosymbolic AI, or autonomous vehicle applications; we welcome you to reach out. In your email, please clearly describe the connection and the overlap between your research interests and the group’s current research areas.
Because we receive many inquiries, we are generally unable to consider student projects outside of UCSC without an existing institutional, advising, or research-field connection.
We are always interested in exploring new collaborations. Please send Leilani or the group an email to coordinate a meeting.