I receive hundreds of email every day, and just don’t have the bandwidth to respond to most of them. So this is my (starry-eyed) attempt to help you. First of all, please address me by my first name (Danish). No titles needed. Trust me, you would not be offending anyone here, and it only goes on to show that you made the effort to read this.
Everyone’s different and might be operating under a different set of expectations, so I thought I will be explicitly clear about what to (or not) expect from me:
Thanks for thinking of me for this! It would help if your email could mention exact dates of the event, details about the audience, and whether there’s funding to support the trip? For such requests, please copy Ms. Vani (vania@iisc.ac.in), who provides administrative support to my group. If you are representing a for-profit company, and the event is a limited-access event for your employees, then please consider compensating experts for their time.
As an academic, I already spend a lot of time offering free ‘‘service’’: reviewing, area-chairing, committee work, organization, etc. Most such activities take away time from my real service towards my students. If you are asking me to do something for you—that’s totally fine, but I would kindly request you to at least consider how that is going to help me or my students?
It has been heartwarming to see so much interest amongst students in joining our group. Generally, every year, I hope to recruit a few PhD students (0-2), a few masters students (0-2), a few full-time research assistants. While we are flexible when it comes to working from home, we do not recruit fully-remote members. We are not looking for any more interns for this summer (2025).
What does the lab work on? We broadly work in the areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML). As of now (Jan 2025), I am particularly interested in:
There are several different roles that might work for you:
PhD & M.Tech (by research) Programs: You’d have to formally be accepted at IISc first. If you feel you are a good fit, I’d encourage you to apply to these programs, specifying the Department of Computational Data Sciences (CDS) in your application. The institute-wide application deadline for this year is March 23, 2025. More details about the admissions process are here. Some frequently asked questions about admissions are answered here. Note that students with GPA > 8 from centrally funded institutes—including IITs, NITs—don’t need to write national tests (e.g., GATE) to apply for the PhD program. Similarly, candidates who have completed (or are pursuing) a masters degree (MS/M Tech/ME) from anywhere in the world are also eligible to apply. This is a step forward towards simplifying admissions. I would encourage interested students to express their interest using this form: https://forms.gle/8tN2seUFBbvQXqBs6.
M Tech (by coursework) Students: Despite different advisor-advisee matching timelines across departments, we typically engage with students in the month of November, and make offers by Nov 30. This loosely aligns with the M Tech (CDS) and M Tech (AI) timelines. Students from other departments are welcome too, but please email before the end of November.
Research Assistants (RAs)/Pre-docs: Please email and share your background, skills, aspirations and interests. Don’t forget to include tentative start date and the time duration.
Interns: There are no available internship positions as of now.
What to include in your email? Please share your interests, background and skills and how they are relevant to what we do. Don’t forget to include your CV and transcripts (unofficial ones suffice).
What is my advising style? It’s an honor—and a rare privilege—to be able to serve students. I cherish the opportunity and take responsibility for furthering my students’ interests and careers. My goal as an advisor is to nurture research leaders, who can independently lead a research agenda and solve complex problems. For students who are just starting out, I am involved in the full research cycle: from problem formulation, ideation, brainstorming, interpreting weekly experiments, writing (sometimes too heavily), to providing (sometimes too much) feedback on your talks/posters. As students grow, I provide them with ample opportunities to lead (and initiate) projects and, overall, be independent. Lastly, I love knowing more about the students and am generally keen on organizing lab dinners, celebrating birthdays/festivals, taking trips together, etc.
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