Recruiting
Research Interests
- Scientific Multimodal Foundation Models with Critical Thinking: Build a new multimodal scientific LLM to understand formulas, tables, figures, and charts; Design model can dynamically extract and integrate new multimodal knowledge elements without additional training
- Few-Shot Scientific Knowledge Aquisition: Investigate methods for extracting knowledge from scientific corpora with limited annotation
- Planning and Reasoning in Scientific Domain: Utilize both structured and unstructured knowledge as well as logic rules among knowledge elements to produce trustworthy and explainable results
- Scientific Research Agents with Physical World Interactions: Train a new human-in-the-loop reinforcement learning framework with human, experimental, and literature feedback, which can leverage small datasets in closed-loop discovery platforms; Develop a human-in-the-loop self-driving laboratory that can complete the scientific research lifecycle through interactions with the physical world, such as a robotic laboratory
Position Details
- One fully-funded Data Science PhD positions (Fall 2025 or later)
- Multiple remote internship positions (Summer 2025 or later, long-term availability, excellent candidates may be offered in-person RA positions)
- If you are interested in working with me, please fill this form. After completing the form, you are also welcome to reach out via email (qwang16 [at] wm [dot] edu).
- Will provide multiple ideas for interns to choose from, also very supportive if interns want to pursue their own ideas
- Excellent candidates may have opportunities to collaborate with professors from UIUC/Northwestern/UC Davis…
- Previously mentored 10+ master/undergraduate student, most of whom published papers in top conferences
- Provid hands-on guidance in research and writing; Sponsor students to attend top conferences
- Can recommend students for internships and jobs at top company research institutes
- Aiming to cultivate students’ ability to independently complete a project and publish as the first author
- I received invaluable help and guidance from many professors throughout my academic journey. I was fortunate to have the best advisor in the world, Prof. Heng Ji (highly recommended!), who has mentored me since my junior year. I’m also grateful to Prof. Lifu Huang, my first student mentor, who provided tremendous support during my PhD. These experiences have shaped my own mentoring philosophy: I respect students’ research interests and strive to help them leverage their expertise and discover their passion through research.
- Seeking students with a bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science or related fields, possessing excellent programming skills; passionate about natural language processing research; candidates with relevant research experience or interdisciplinary backgrounds are preferred.
- Each Ph.D. student will be provided with an H200 server
Advisor Profile
- Qingyun Wang is an incoming Assistant Professor of the Data Science Department at William & Mary, starting in August 2025. He is a Ph.D. student in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been a member of the BLENDER Lab since 2017, where he was grateful to have Prof Heng Ji as advisor. He is also mentored by Prof Jiawei Han. Previously, he graduated a summa cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a dual B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics.
- He is among the first researchers to develop a virtual scientific research assistant (i.e., PaperRobot [ACL 2019]) for literature-based discovery by extracting and synthesizing insights from papers. His long-term vision is to develop AI for Scientists (AI4Scientist) tools to effectively accelerate and democratize the entire research lifecycle for scientists.
- He mainly publishes at ACL/EMNLP/NAACL, etc. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led a multi-university collaboration project for drug repurposing report generation. The paper was awarded the NAACL 2021 Best Demo Paper Award.
- During PhD program, he has closely mentored more than ten students for research.
- He has conducted three tutorial sessions at COLING 2024, EACL 2024, and EMNLP 2021, as well as delivered seminar talks at universities and industries around the world (e.g., Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Penn State University, Yale, Elsevier, etc).
- He led an AI4Research workshop at AAAI 2025 on the AI-assisted knowledge-grounded scientific research lifecycle. He also co-organized a Language + Molecule workshop at ACL 2024 with more than 70 attendees.
- He served on a program committee for top AI conferences and journals, such as ICML, NeruIPS, ICLR, Nature Communications Chemistry, Bioinformatics, etc. He is an area chair for ACL Rolling Review and EMNLP Demo.
School/Program Introduction
- The College of William & Mary is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1693 under a royal charter issued by King William III of England and Queen Mary II, it is the second-oldest institution of higher education in the United States after Harvard University, and the ninth-oldest in the English-speaking world. William & Mary is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”.
- Alumni of the college include three presidents of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Tyler, the first President of the Continental Congress Peyton Randolph, the first United States Attorney General Edmund Randolph, the fourth U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, Speaker of the House of Representatives Henry Clay, U.S. Army Commanding General Winfield Scott, sixteen members of the Continental Congress, and four signers of the Declaration of Independence.
- Williamsburg, the location of the school, is a historic city situated 150 miles south of Washington, D.C., and just a few minutes’ drive from Jamestown, the earliest English settlement in North America. The area boasts a pleasant climate and is very safe.
- Amazon’s second headquarters is in Virginia, providing convenient internship opportunities.
- In the 2025 U.S. News & World Report university rankings, the school is ranked 54th.
- Data Science Program will transit into a full department this Fall.
