Research Positions

There are two projects we are hiring summer research positions for. Preliminary details on each are provided here, but please feel free to reach out to Prof Muise for more information.

Scope 2-3 students
Deadline January 31, 2022
Important Prior knowledge on either area (NLP and SAT/CP modeling) is not required.
Note Currently, these positions are restricted to potential NSERC USRA students. This means that you must be a Canadian Citizen to apply. We hope to open them up more broadly later in the semester.

Dialogue Agents

Dialogue agents, chatbots, conversational agents, etc. It’s big business these days, but hard to scale. Research in the MuLab aims at improving this sub-area of AI through the use of planning techniques to generate large and complex dialogue agents that are verifiably correct and explainable – essential elements for any agent deployed in a business context. This project will involve building a core framework for dialogue agent design through the use of planning technology.

Learning Constraints for SAT/CSPs

SAT and CSP models are some of the world’s best solution techniques for highly complex and combinatoric problems. E.g., scheduling the shifts for an entire hospital. In this project, we will explore the idea of data-driven analysis of existing schedules, in order to infer which constraints may have been used to generate them. This flips the common problem of specifying constraints to solve problems on its head – we have the solutions, and want to know which constraints were used.

Application Procedure

To apply for the above project, please email Prof. Muise with the following details (there are several parts, but all of them should be brief):

  1. Your name and a bit of background about yourself.

  2. The project name and expression of your interest in the area.

  3. Your (unofficial) Queen’s transcript.

  4. If you are Canadian (affects funding sources you may be eligible for).

  5. If you have taken CISC 204 with Prof Muise and completed a project, please provide a link to the project and briefly describe what your group did.

  6. (if available) A CV/Resume

  7. (if available) A link to any software/projects you’ve worked on (e.g., GitHub profile).

  8. At least one of the roles is reserved for a member of an underrepresented group (race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, etc.). Please self-identify what underrepresented/minority group(s) you belong to if you feel comfortable doing so and you would like to be considered for this position.

We will reach out to interested students and possibly interview if there is high demand for the project. If necessary, the interview process will involve a small coding exercise as well as meeting with Prof. Muise and/or Mu Lab members.