Ayan Mukhopadhyay RAIL Lab at W&M

Get in touch

Ayan Mukhopadhyay

Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Director, Robust & Adaptive Intelligence Laboratory

Email
OfficeIntegrated Science Center 1392
AddressSchool of Computing, Data Science, and Physics
College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, VA 23187
ScholarGoogle Scholar profile

Prospective PhD students

I am recruiting students interested in sequential decision-making, reinforcement learning, and applied optimization for real systems. Admissions decisions are made by the department, so apply directly to the William & Mary Computer Science PhD program and name RAIL in your statement of purpose.

Do not send me an introductory email; use the instructions below before emailing me. I read every message that follows them.

W&M undergraduates and master's students

There is usually room for a small number of students to join ongoing projects for research credit or over the summer. Coursework in probability, algorithms, and machine learning helps, but curiosity and persistence matter more. Email me with what you have built or studied so far.

I also advise students through the courses I teach; Decision-Making under Uncertainty is a good on-ramp.

Collaborators and agencies

Much of our work starts with an operational partner: a transit agency, a fire department, a health non-profit, a utility. If you run a system where decisions have to be made repeatedly under uncertainty and you have data about it, I would like to hear from you.

Prospective students and postdocs

How to reach out

I receive a large volume of near-identical email, most of it sent to fifty faculty at once. Three things make yours one I will read. They take about ten minutes.

  1. Put the code at the start of your subject line

    Begin the subject with this, so your message sorts into the pile I actually work through:

    RAIL 2027

    Example subject: RAIL 2027: PhD inquiry, non-stationary planning

  2. Attach your CV and a research statement

    One page is plenty for the statement. Tell me which of the projects interests you and what you would want to work on within it. Specific beats comprehensive: a question you want to answer, a dataset you want to attack, or a result of ours you think is wrong.

  3. Apply to the program

    Emailing me is not an application and does not substitute for one. Admission is decided by the department, through the formal application to the William & Mary Computer Science PhD program. Name RAIL in your statement of purpose.

My address is in the card at the top of this page. Messages without the code, or without the two attachments, tend not to get a reply. That is not a judgement on your work; it is the only way I can tell a message written for me from one sent to everybody.