CS Top-Conference PhD Recruitment Roundup — Week of June 2, 2025

This week's digest covers PhD and postdoc openings publicly announced by faculty with recent NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, and ACL papers. Each entry lists research direction, application details where available, and a short note on lab culture and fit.

Open positions this week

The listings below span embodied AI, AI systems, NLP, ML for biology, and computer vision — a cross-section of what top-conference labs are recruiting for right now.

Hongsheng Li — Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)

Prof. Hongsheng Li is recruiting PhD students for the 2027 intake, with focus on:

Embodied AI and robotic manipulation
Multimodal foundation models

Li's lab published 27 papers at ICML, CVPR, ICLR, and AAAI in 2026, and 13 papers at NeurIPS 2025 — one of the most productive vision/embodied-AI groups in Asia. He was promoted to Full Professor effective August 2026. 1

Field	Details
Position	PhD student (2027 intake)
Institution	CUHK, Hong Kong
Research areas	Embodied AI, robotic manipulation, multimodal models
Stipend	Per CUHK HKPFS / standard PhD funding (not disclosed on page)
Location	Hong Kong SAR
Remote type	On-site
Key requirements	Strong CV research background, top-conference publications a plus
Deadline	Not disclosed — contact early
Apply	ee.cuhk.edu.hk/~hsli/

Lab culture note: High-output group with strong conference presence. Good fit for applicants interested in scaling vision models toward robotics. Given the 2027 intake timeline, this is the right moment to reach out.

Yajin Zhou — Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)

Prof. Yajin Zhou (Associate Professor, CUHK) is actively seeking PhD students and postdocs with strong backgrounds in AI systems and operating systems. 2

Field	Details
Position	PhD student / Postdoc
Institution	CUHK, Hong Kong
Research areas	AI systems, operating systems, security
Stipend	Per CUHK standard (not disclosed)
Location	Hong Kong SAR
Remote type	On-site
Key requirements	Systems background; interest in OS and AI infrastructure
Deadline	Rolling — "self-motivated" candidates preferred
Apply	yajin.org

Lab culture note: Systems-focused group with emphasis on OS-layer AI work. Less crowded niche than pure ML; strong for students who want to build the infrastructure underneath large models.

Wei Xu — Georgia Institute of Technology

Prof. Wei Xu (Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech) works on NLP, machine learning, and large language models, with particular interest in multilingual and cross-cultural LLMs. Her lab has published at ACL, EMNLP, and related venues. 3

Field	Details
Position	PhD student
Institution	Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Research areas	NLP, multilingual LLMs, machine translation, data-efficient learning
Stipend	Standard US CS PhD RA/TA stipend
Location	Atlanta, GA (on-site)
Remote type	On-site
Key requirements	Strong programming, NLP research experience
Deadline	Georgia Tech deadline (typically December)
Apply	cocoxu.github.io

Lab culture note: One of the more actively recruiting NLP labs at Georgia Tech. Good for cross-cultural and multilingual NLP track. Xu is also affiliated with the Georgia Tech ML Center.

Dmitry Kobak — VIB Center for AI & Computational Biology (VIB.AI), Belgium

Dr. Dmitry Kobak has opened multiple PhD positions at the newly established Kobak Lab at VIB.AI in Belgium. The lab applies machine learning and dimensionality reduction to biological data (single-cell, neural data). Kobak is an area chair at NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR (all from 2026) and action editor at TMLR. 4 5

Field	Details
Position	Multiple PhD positions
Institution	VIB Center for AI & Computational Biology, Belgium
Research areas	Machine learning for biology, dimensionality reduction, single-cell data, neural data
Stipend	Belgian doctoral fellowship (FWO / VIB standard — competitive European rate)
Location	Belgium
Remote type	On-site
Key requirements	MSc in CS, physics, statistics, or computational biology; ML experience
Deadline	Open — start "as soon as possible"
Apply	jobs.vib.be Kobak Lab posting

Lab culture note: Newly opened lab — strong opportunity to shape the research agenda early. Kobak's dual footing in top-tier ML venues and biological applications makes this ideal for cross-disciplinary students.

Laptop open to research papers on a study desk

Mohit Iyyer — University of Maryland

Prof. Mohit Iyyer (Associate Professor, UMD CS) works on NLP — specifically long-form text generation, literary NLP, and machine reading. His page notes he plans to accept one new PhD student for the coming cycle. 6

Field	Details
Position	1 PhD student
Institution	University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Research areas	Long-form text generation, literary NLP, machine comprehension
Stipend	Standard US CS PhD stipend
Location	College Park, MD (on-site)
Remote type	On-site
Key requirements	NLP background; writing research experience a plus
Deadline	UMD CS deadline (typically December)
Apply	cs.umd.edu/~miyyer

Lab culture note: Small cohort — expect close mentoring. Good fit for applicants whose interests sit at the intersection of language models and literary / humanistic applications.

Yunpeng Li — (Institution TBC)

Dr. Yunpeng Li has announced a fully-funded PhD position in the broad areas of multimodal AI and digital healthcare, open as of May 2026. 7

Field	Details
Position	Fully-funded PhD
Institution	Not publicly specified on homepage — contact for details
Research areas	Multimodal AI, digital healthcare
Stipend	Fully funded (confirmed)
Location	Not disclosed
Remote type	Not disclosed
Key requirements	Background in ML or biomedical computing
Deadline	Not disclosed — rolling
Apply	yunpengli.ac

Lab culture note: Limited public information on lab structure. Worth a direct email if multimodal healthcare AI aligns with your interests.

Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI)

Bosch BCAI — Bosch's central AI research division, based in Germany with presence across multiple sites — currently employs ten PhD students and one postdoc and is described as an active hiring unit for 2025–2026. Research covers AI/ML applications in computer vision, automation, and automotive systems. 8

Field	Details
Position	PhD student / Postdoc (industry)
Institution	Bosch Center for AI (Robert Bosch GmbH)
Research areas	Computer vision, applied ML, robotics, automotive AI
Stipend	Industry PhD stipend (typically above academic rates in Germany)
Location	Germany (multiple sites)
Remote type	On-site / hybrid
Key requirements	Strong ML background; publications at CVPR/NeurIPS/ICML a significant plus
Deadline	Rolling open positions — check BCAI careers
Apply	bosch.com/research/bcai

Lab culture note: Industry PhD route — co-advised with external university faculty (standard German Doktorand model). Strong access to proprietary hardware datasets and real-world robotics test beds. Less suited for purely theoretical work; excellent for applied systems.

Library shelves with academic books — representing cross-institutional lab search

How to read these listings

The information above is drawn from publicly available lab homepages and job boards as of the week of June 2, 2025. Deadlines and slot availability can change; always verify directly with the lab before investing time in an application.

A few patterns this week:

Asia and Europe dominate new openings — CUHK (two labs), VIB Belgium, and Bosch Germany. US openings (Georgia Tech, UMD) are tied to standard December admission cycles.
AI systems and embodied AI are active — both CUHK labs position toward infra-layer and robot-facing ML, reflecting demand from the robotics/foundation-model convergence.
Small cohorts = closer mentorship — Iyyer explicitly limits to one student; Kobak's lab is newly opened. Early contact is especially important for these.

If you spot a PhD or postdoc opening from a recent top-conference author that should be in next week's roundup, details on the channel page.

CS PhD & Postdoc Recruitment Roundup — Week of June 2, 2025