Admission to PhD program
My group continues to take on new doctoral students. All applications are handled centrally by the department. I'm happy to answer questions about our ongoing research and our research directions, but prefer not to discuss joining the group with students until they have been formally admitted. I'm taking fewer doctoral students nowadays than I used to, as I'm focusing more on my core interests of software design, and enjoying devoting more time to individual students.
MEng and UROP positions
MEng, UROP and SuperUROP positions and often available. I do not generally offer research assistantships to MEng students. Some research projects in which positions may be available:
- Dark design: exploring conceptual design aspects of "dark design" in which companies use explicit design strategies to take advantage of users.
- Analyzing conceptual designs with Alloy: Alloy is an automated modeling language that works by reducing analysis to SAT. We're looking at how it can be applied in the conceptual design stage to explore designs more effectively and find flaws prior to implementation.
- Conceptual design explorations: we're applying conceptual design to explain and evaluate popular apps, including Zoom, Figma, Spotify and others.
External students
Unfortunately, I don't generally offer internships, summer positions or other research involvements to external students, as I feel obligated primarily to students already at MIT.