• Jobs

Open Po­s­i­tions

RGL is look­ing to re­cruit a PhD stu­dent in the wider area of dif­fer­en­ti­able and in­verse ren­der­ing / ren­der­ing sys­tems / ap­pear­ance mod­el­ing in the up­com­ing ad­mis­sions cycle (The dead­line for this is Decem­ber 15).

What EPFL and RGL, and I can of­fer

EPFL provides a world-class, highly col­lab­or­at­ive in­ter­na­tion­al re­search en­vir­on­ment with com­pet­it­ive salar­ies and a beau­ti­ful set­ting on the shores of Lake Geneva. RGL is un­usu­al in that in ad­di­tion to con­duct­ing re­search on fun­da­ment­al as­pects of ren­der­ing, we also in­vest sig­ni­fic­ant amounts of time to build prac­tic­al sys­tems (e.g. Mit­suba 3, Dr.Jit, PBRT) that con­sti­tute a widely used found­a­tion of re­search pro­jects around the world. Due to the small size of RGL (cur­rently just 3 PhD can­did­ates), I am able to provide close su­per­vi­sion to stu­dents and of­ten help im­ple­ment­ing some part of their pro­jects.

Doc­tor­al pro­gram

RGL is part of EPFL's School of Com­puter and Com­mu­nic­a­tion Sci­ences (“IC”). Doc­tor­al stu­dents in this school are part of a cent­ral­ized doc­tor­al pro­gram (EDIC), which is some­what un­usu­al com­pared to our European peer in­sti­tu­tions (that said, such pro­grams are com­mon in top-10 schools in the United States).

One im­plic­a­tion of this dif­fer­ence is that stu­dents do not dir­ectly ap­ply to pro­fess­ors (e.g. me), but to a pro­gram. Ad­mis­sion is done by a com­mit­tee of pro­fess­ors from dif­fer­ent areas of com­puter sci­ences with the goal of re­cruit­ing the best can­did­ates. The stu­dents se­lec­ted by this com­mit­tee re­ceive a flex­ible fel­low­ship that cov­ers their first year. Dur­ing this time, they can take classes and con­duct small re­search pro­jects (“EDIC pro­jects” / “ro­ta­tions”) in dif­fer­ent labs, with the goal of choos­ing an ad­visor that will form­ally hire them in­to their lab at the end of the first year. This sys­tem is par­tic­u­larly valu­able if you are in­ter­ested in mul­tiple re­search areas and would like to ex­per­i­ment and gain fur­ther ex­per­i­ence be­fore com­mit­ting to a con­crete path. Mul­tiple ro­ta­tions are not a re­quire­ment, however (in case you are only in­ter­ested in a single lab).

The dead­line of ap­plic­a­tions to EDIC is Decem­ber 15 and con­sists of

• State­ment of Pur­pose (ideally writ­ten so that it can be un­der­stood by a gen­er­al CS audi­ence)
• Grade Tran­scripts
• Cur­riculum Vitae
• 3 Re­com­mend­a­tion let­ters

The re­com­mend­a­tion let­ters are prob­ably the most im­port­ant part of your ap­plic­a­tion—ideally, they should be from people with whom you have col­lab­or­ated closely, and who can com­ment on your abil­ity to do re­search. Re­com­mend­a­tion let­ters from in­struct­ors who can com­ment on your grades but don't really know you well provide very little in­form­a­tion re­l­at­ive to the grade tran­script. For this reas­on, it's im­port­ant to have at least 1-2 let­ters of the former cat­egory (ideally re­spec­ted col­leagues who can provide a de­tailed and pos­it­ive as­sesse­ment of your qual­it­ies as a re­search­er.)

The EDIC ap­plic­a­tion form also provides a field where you can spe­cify fac­ulty of in­terest, with whom you have already com­mu­nic­ated—please make sure to enter my name here.

Please don't hes­it­ate to reach out to me if you are have any ques­tions. Once the dead­line is over and all ap­plic­a­tion files are avail­able, I will also reach out to ap­plic­ants to sched­ule a fol­lowup Skype/Zoom in­ter­view (some time in Janu­ary).