For Students

Grad school admissions

Thanks for your interest in working with me! I am broadly recruiting PhD students through Linguistics, Computer Science and the Center for Data Science. If you mention my name in the application in any of these departments, I will read your application.

The Linguistics department will be a better fit for you if you are interested in scientific questions about language and/or broader Cognitive Science. If you are primarily interested in NLP, I recommend applying to Computer Science or the Center for Data Science, depending on your curricular interests and maybe fit with other faculty in the respective departments.

Application links:

Linguistics
Computer Science
Center for Data Science

Recommendation letters

If you’ve worked with me in some capacity I’d be very happy to write you a recommendation letter. But for this I ask you to kindly do the following:

Email me: Even if I verbally agreed to do it, please email me to get the confirmation on record.
Give me at least 3 weeks: If the earliest deadline that I have to meet is less than three weeks away, I won’t be able to write you a letter.
Share your application materials and deadlines: If I agree to write you a letter, share your application materials (that is, whatever you’re submitting to the opportunity you’re asking the letter for) and the deadline/list of deadlines with me. If it’s not graduate school application, send me the description of the opportunity/event as well. The earlier the better! The deadlines should be in the first email you send. The application materials can come a bit later, but not something like the day before the earliest deadline. I understand if the material is in draft stage, but often just a work-in-progress draft helps a lot with letter writing.

Apologies in advance that I will have to decline requests that don’t follow the above instructions, and thanks for understanding!

Research opportunities for BU students

Undergrads: I typically ask undergraduate students to have taken & performed well in at least one of my advanced computational courses (i.e., non-intro) before discussing research opportunities, unless you already have prior research experiences. Then, feel free to reach out to me to either: (1) pitch a project that is UROP-scoped that aligns with my research interests, or (2) ask if there are RA opportunities (but RA opps are sparse).

MS students: I have limited availability for MS supervision. I might agree to collaborating in rare circumstances, but similarly to undergraduates I’ll typically only agree to work with students who have taken one of my non-intro classes.

PhD students who are not my advisees: Reach out to me and we can discuss more!