Youngwoon Lee
About Students Getting Involved

Getting Involved

The goal of our lab is to enable machines to learn complex real-world tasks, especially with robots. Toward this goal, we are interested in developing scalable reinforcement learning algorithms that can leverage diverse data and prior knowledge.

  • Relevant topics: reinforcement learning, imitation learning, representation learning, generative modeling, and their applications to robotics
  • Target conferences: (Robot Learning) RSS, CoRL / (Machine Learning) ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS

Hiring plan

  • We are actively hiring our starting members at all levels!
  • 1~2 MS / PhD students and 3~4 undergraduate students every year
  • Sophomores and juniors are encouraged to apply

We are looking for students who

  • are motivated to make progress in AI, improve yourself, and build a stellar career
  • get things done while having high standard on quality
  • are fluent in English
  • can work in-person and full-time for at least 6 months
    • 40+ hours/week during summer and winter; 20+ hours/week otherwise

Recommendations before you apply


How to apply

  1. Please email me (lywoon89@gmail.com) your CV, transcripts, and short statement about your research interests, background knowledge, research-related experience (if any), and career plan
  2. 30-min casual interview
  3. Screening implementation project (2 weeks long) and 30-min technical presentation

What to expect from our lab?

I aim to build a strong research lab, where everyone aims for a career at top schools and companies. Thus, my expectation for PhD is to match or even outperform students from other top labs in Korea (e.g. Prof. Joseph Lim’s lab, Prof. Jinwoo Shin’s lab).

By the time you graduate, I believe you will

  • publish 1+ top-tier conference paper every year
  • have good presentation skills
  • mentor several junior students
  • have 1~2 internship experience at top research labs
  • be well-known in the community

To support your growth and success in PhD, we are building our lab culture as follows:

  • Research-focused environment with minimal work outside of research
  • Everyone, including undergraduate, works on their own project
  • 1:1 meeting every week
  • Enjoy interaction and discussion in the lab
  • Encourage internal/external collaboration
  • English for written communication and presentation

FAQ

  • [Q] Are there set working hours?
    We have flexible working hours, but we encourage "core working hours (11am-5pm)" to facillitate more interactions within the lab.
  • [Q] Am I getting paid?
    MS / PhD students will be paid a stipend that covers tuition, housing, and food.
  • [Q] What group activities are there?
    We have weekly group meetings, reading groups, and lab socials. We provide lunch for the group meetings and dinner for the lab socials!
  • [Q] Why is English used for written communication and presentation?
    You will read materials in English, write papers in English, and discuss and present your work in English. To help you become more comfortable with these activities, we provide an English-friendly environment.
  • [Q] Will there be any duties other than research?
    We try to minimize work outside of research (e.g. industrial projects, paperwork) to allow you to focus on research.
  • [Q] Can I collaborate with researchers in the US?
    Yes, we encourage external collaborations and internships at top research labs (e.g. Berkeley, Stanford, KAIST, Google, Deepmind). Look at our coauthors as a reference.
  • [Q] Do you have robots?
    We plan to order two Franka Research 3 robot arms.
  • [Q] How many GPUs are availabe to me?
    The Yonsei AI department has 1,500+ GPUs available and we plan to get our own DGX.
  • [Q] Which deep learning framework are you using?
    Most previous projects were in PyTorch. But, we are mainly using JAX for current projects.
  • [Q] I am not a Yonsei student. Can I apply?
    Yes.