We are recruiting highly motivated and talented students (BSc, MS and PhD) to join the lab! Please read the instructions on this page before emailing us so that we can respond more efficiently. We will do our best to get back to you as soon as possible. If you do not hear back within a week, feel free to follow up.
If you are seriously thinking about doing a PhD, that already means you probably have a real interest in research, which is awesome! The next big question is: what area do you want to spend several years working on?
It is completely okay if you do not have a perfectly defined PhD topic when applying. But if that is the case, I would still expect a strong background in controls, optimization, machine learning, robotics, or a closely related area together with clear evidence that you have taken the time to think carefully about the kind of problems you want to work on.
The best way to do that is simple: read. Read papers, read recent work in the area, observe and think about the things around you and figure out what kinds of problems genuinely interest you. Ask yourself: What is still open? What excites me? How does this connect to the kind of work being done in the CORTx Lab?
To get a positive response, it helps a lot if you do your homework. Please do not send generic emails saying only that you are interested in joining the lab. That usually signals that you have not really thought about the fit. This is true not only for this lab, but in general.
If you are reaching out to a professor or PI, read their research, read some of their papers and be specific about what interests you and why. Generic or obviously AI-generated emails usually show laziness and lack of seriousness and they are much less likely to get a useful response.
I strongly encourage you to prepare at least a short proposal (around 2-3 pages is a good target) describing how you imagine your PhD or MS research direction: what problems you want to work on, why they matter, what background you bring and how they connect to our work.
It is completely okay if you do not know everything yet. In fact, one of the most important skills in a PhD is learning how to learn -- both about what is known and what is not yet known (perhaps above all).
In your email, please include:
Also, I highly recommend reading Prof. Eric Feron’s short notes. They are worth your time:
Excellent postdoctoral candidates are encouraged to contact me by email (halmubarak at kfupm dot edu.sa) with a subject line that includes “Prospective Postdoc” to discuss current openings.
I am particularly interested in candidates with a strong background and publication record in safety-critical control, safety-critical learning, and related areas at the intersection of control, machine learning, and modern AI.
Current directions of interest include both: (i) developing safe control-theoretic foundations for emerging AI-enabled systems, including settings involving generative AI, LLMs and MLLMs and (ii) using AI / generative AI methods to improve safety-critical control, planning, adaptation, and decision making.
In your email, please include:
If our interests align, your recruitment will be through the Smart Mobility and Logistics (SML) Interdisciplinary Research Center. I would also be happy to work with you on pursuing external funding for your postdoctoral research.
If you are already enrolled as a graduate student, the same general advice applies: do your research first, make sure your interests and skills match what we do and come with a concrete idea or proposal before reaching out.
You also have the advantage of being able to talk to current lab members and learn more about our work. Use that. It is always a good idea to understand what the lab is doing before stopping by or sending an email.
We are always happy to work with highly motivated undergraduate and MS students who are genuinely interested in learning advanced tools, building robotic and autonomous systems and doing real research.
If you are enrolled in a class I am teaching, feel free to talk to me. If you already have an idea for a project, a system you want to build, or a problem you want to solve, that is even better.
You are also encouraged to talk to lab members to learn more about our work and where you might be able to contribute.