ML PhD / Postdoc Openings — Issue #1: 5 Labs Recruiting for Fall 2026
Five ML and NLP labs with top-conference authorship — Georgia Tech (Wei Xu), NYU (Eunsol Choi, Greg Durrett), Technion (Yonatan Belinkov), and Allen AI — are actively recruiting PhD students and postdocs for Fall 2026. This inaugural issue covers research focus, representative papers, application instructions, and deadlines for each opening.
ML PhD / Postdoc Openings — Issue #1
Five labs with top-conference authorship are actively recruiting for Fall 2026 and beyond. This inaugural issue covers PhD and postdoc opportunities at labs whose PIs have published at ACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, and ICML — with verified application instructions pulled directly from each lab's homepage.
This Week's Openings
Five positions confirmed open as of late May 2026, across four institutions. Deadlines and admissions cycles vary — read each entry before deciding whether to act now or bookmark for the autumn application window.
1. PhD — Wei Xu Lab · Georgia Tech
PI: Wei Xu, Associate Professor, College of Computing
Institution: Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA)
Position type: PhD student (Fall 2026 entry)
Openings: 1–2 students
Research focus: Large language models — post-training and reinforcement learning for multilingual adaptation, cultural robustness, and temporal generalization; long-context and multi-turn evaluation; agentic / user simulation; cross-disciplinary AI applications in education, privacy, law, and healthcare.
Representative recent papers:
- NAACL 2025 and ACL 2024 work on paraphrase, cultural bias, and LLM evaluation (Wei Xu's lab publishes primarily at ACL, EMNLP, and NAACL) 1
How to apply: Apply to the Georgia Tech ML PhD or CS PhD program and name Wei Xu as a potential advisor in your application. After submitting, send a short email to flag your application. Professor Xu typically does not respond to pre-application inquiries due to volume.
Application deadline: Georgia Tech CS/ML PhD — typically December 1, 2025 (check the GaTech admissions page for the official 2026-cycle deadline). 1
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Salary / Stipend | Standard GaTech PhD RA stipend (undisclosed; comparable to peer programs) |
| Location | Atlanta, GA — on-site |
| Required materials | Application via GaTech admissions portal; short email after submission |
| Visa support | Not disclosed |
2. PhD — Eunsol Choi Lab · NYU
PI: Eunsol Choi, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Center for Data Science
Institution: New York University (New York, NY)
Position type: PhD student
Openings: 1–2 students for the next admissions cycle
Research focus: Open-domain question answering, information extraction, discourse understanding, conversational AI, and evaluation of language models. Choi is known for her work on QuAC and other dialogue-based QA benchmarks, and for co-advising students at the intersection of NLP and learning. 2
Representative recent papers:
- Co-authored EMNLP / ACL papers on QA and reading comprehension with the TAUR lab (co-advised alumni include Yasumasa Onoe at Google and Jifan Chen at Amazon AWS)
How to apply: Apply to NYU's CS PhD program or NYU Data Science PhD program and mention Eunsol Choi in your application. No personal email needed before submitting.
Application deadline: NYU CS PhD — typically December 15 (confirm on NYU GSAS admissions page for the current cycle). 2
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Salary / Stipend | Standard NYU CS PhD RA stipend (undisclosed) |
| Location | New York, NY — on-site |
| Required materials | Online application via NYU GSAS; name Eunsol Choi as preferred advisor |
| Visa support | Not disclosed |
3. Postdoc + PhD — Yonatan Belinkov Lab · Technion
PI: Yonatan Belinkov, Associate Professor, Taub Faculty of Computer Science
Institution: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel); on sabbatical at Harvard Kempner Institute (2025–2026)
Position types: (a) Postdoc — Fall 2026 start · (b) PhD — 2026–2027 entry
Openings: Open (number not specified)
Research focus: Interpretability of large language models; robustness, safety, and controllability; emergent and multi-agent communication; AI for science including biological language models. Belinkov has authored at NeurIPS (2022, Best Paper co-author), ACL, EMNLP, and ICLR. 3
Representative recent papers:
- Measuring Chain of Thought Faithfulness by Unlearning Reasoning Steps — EMNLP 2025
- Arithmetic Without Algorithms: Language Models Solve Math With a Bag of Heuristics — ICLR 2025
- Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT — NeurIPS 2022 3
How to apply:
- Postdoc (Fall 2026): Email
belinkov [at] technion.ac.ilwith CV, publication list, and an optional short research proposal. - PhD (2026–2027): Contact during spring 2026 with CV, transcripts, and code examples. Apply directly to the Technion MSc/PhD program.
Application deadline: Many postdoc fellowships have early deadlines — Belinkov explicitly recommends getting in touch proactively. PhD contact recommended spring 2026.
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Salary / Stipend | Not disclosed |
| Location | Haifa, Israel (Technion); Boston-area collaboration welcome during sabbatical year |
| Required materials | Postdoc: CV + publications + optional research proposal; PhD: CV + transcripts + code samples |
| Visa support | Not disclosed |
4. PhD — TAUR Lab (Greg Durrett) · NYU
PI: Greg Durrett, Associate Professor, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Center for Data Science
Institution: New York University (New York, NY) — moved from UT Austin in Fall 2025
Position type: PhD student
Openings: Recruiting from both Courant CS and NYU CDS admissions pools
Research focus: LLMs for reasoning under real-world constraints — factuality assessment, augmenting models with external tools (SMT solvers, databases), interpretability-guided training, and domain applications (medical informatics, legal reasoning, astronomy). Recent highlights include NeurIPS 2024, EMNLP 2024, and ICLR 2025 papers. 4
Representative recent papers:
- Specializing LLMs with insights from interpretability — NeurIPS 2024
- Assessing strengths and weaknesses of chain-of-thought — ICLR 2025
- Learning models to assess fine-grained factuality of generation systems — EMNLP 2024 4
How to apply: Apply to the NYU Courant CS PhD program or the NYU Center for Data Science PhD program via standard channels. Flag interest in Greg Durrett in the application form — no cold email needed before applying. Current NYU students can email Greg directly.
Application deadline: NYU CS — typically December 15; NYU CDS — check CDS website. 5
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Salary / Stipend | Standard NYU CS/CDS RA stipend (undisclosed) |
| Location | New York, NY — on-site |
| Required materials | Standard PhD application; indicate interest in TAUR lab in the form |
| Visa support | Not disclosed |
5. Young Investigator (Postdoc) & Predoctoral Young Investigator · Allen Institute for AI (Ai2)
PI / Host: Senior researchers across Ai2's NLP and open-AI research teams
Institution: Allen Institute for AI (Seattle, WA; Berkeley, CA for FlexOlmo)
Position types: (a) Young Investigator (Postdoc-equivalent, 1–3 yr) · (b) Predoctoral Young Investigator (pre-PhD research position, 1–3 yr)
Openings confirmed: Young Investigator – FlexOlmo (Berkeley, CA); Young Investigator – Robotics; Predoctoral YI – Open Ecosystem 6
About Ai2: Ai2 is a nonprofit AI research institute founded by Paul Allen, best known for the OLMo open language model project, AllenNLP toolkits, and high-output NLP publications at ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, and NeurIPS. Senior Research Director Hannaneh Hajishirzi (also UW professor) and others co-lead the lab. Alumni of the Predoctoral YI program have entered PhD programs at CMU, Stanford, MIT, UW, and other top institutions. 6
Research focus (current open roles):
- FlexOlmo: Flexible, open-source language model research — modularity and efficient adaptation
- Robotics: Language-conditioned robot learning
- Open Ecosystem: Contributing to Ai2's open-source NLP infrastructure
How to apply: Submit through the official Ai2 careers portal or LinkedIn. Ai2 does not accept emailed CVs — apply only through official channels. Create a MyGreenhouse account to track status. 7
Application deadline: Rolling — no hard deadline listed. Visa sponsorship available; typical processing time 2–3 months after offer acceptance.
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Salary / Stipend | Competitive; not publicly disclosed |
| Location | Seattle, WA (most roles); Berkeley, CA (FlexOlmo) — on-site required for most |
| Required materials | CV; application via Ai2 careers portal / LinkedIn |
| Visa support | Yes — multiple visa and work permit types supported |
Lab Snapshot
| PI | Institution | Research Area | Opening Type | Approx. Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wei Xu | Georgia Tech | LLMs, multilingual, evaluation | PhD | Dec 1 (GaTech) |
| Eunsol Choi | NYU | QA, dialogue, discourse | PhD | Dec 15 (NYU CS) |
| Yonatan Belinkov | Technion | Interpretability, LLM safety | Postdoc + PhD | Rolling / Spring 2026 |
| Greg Durrett | NYU (TAUR) | Reasoning, factuality, tools | PhD | Dec 15 (NYU CS/CDS) |
| Ai2 YI Program | Allen Institute for AI | Open NLP, robotics | Postdoc / Pre-PhD | Rolling |
Applicant Checklist
Most PhD programs covered this week share the same application materials set:
- Statement of purpose — name the specific PI; describe one alignment point between your past work and their current research agenda
- Three letters of recommendation — at least one from a research supervisor
- CV / resume — include publications, preprints, and code projects
- Transcripts — official or unofficial at application stage, official if admitted
- Code or research samples — Belinkov's lab specifically asks for these; useful for all lab applications
Postdoc-specific additions:
- Full publication list
- Optional research proposal (encouraged by Belinkov; assumed by most PIs)
This channel publishes every Sunday. Sources are PI lab homepages and official lab/institute careers pages verified by direct fetch. Positions not explicitly listed on a PI's homepage as open are not included, even if that PI is known to recruit generally.
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