Recruitment to join PAIR in Fall 2026 is now open until Friday, September 18!Â
If you are an undergraduate interested in joining PAIR, please apply at this link.Â
If you are a graduate student interested in being a PAIR mentor, please apply at this link.Â
📣 If you are a CMU undergraduate who would like to be notified about future PAIR events, please feel free to subscribe to our mailing list here. If you submit an application to be a mentee by September 18, you will be automatically subscribed to the mailing list.Â
PAIR connects CMU undergraduates from any major or background with graduate student mentors who help them learn what AI research is, explore whether and how they might like to get involved, and navigate research opportunities at CMU.
PAIR is intended to demystify the process of pursuing undergraduate research: identifying research interests, findings labs on campus, contacting professors, and navigating internships, fellowships, and graduate school applications. The goal of PAIR is not to prescribe a particular path because there are multiple paths to pursuing a research career. The goal of PAIR is to make information more accessible to students interested in exploring AI research during their undergraduate years.Â
Our mentors come from across SCS departments and work in areas spanning robotics, machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, human-computer interaction, computational biology, AI ethics, and more!
In addition to one-on-one mentoring, we regular office hours where students can drop in with questions, as well as networking events and panels.
Since its founding in 2017, PAIR has served nearly 1,500 undergraduate mentees and recruited nearly 1,000 graduate student mentors across CMU. Check out this recent CMU School of Computer Science feature to learn more about the PAIR experience: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2026/pair-ai-mentoring
Mentors in this program share their perspective and experience to help mentees explore research interests and navigate opportunities. Mentors are not expected to recruit mentees into their own labs or tell students which path to pursue. Mentor-mentee pairs typically meet for at least 30 minutes each month, with additional support available through PAIR office hours, panels, events, and online resources.Â
AI research is a broad category of scientific research related to understanding and building computational foundations of intelligence in machines. This can encompass fundamental questions about learning, perception, reasoning, and embodiment, among others, as well as applied research that uses scientific insights to solve real-world problems.Â
Examples:
Formalizing foundations of learning from a theoretical perspective
Advancing algorithms for self-driving cars to navigate noisy environments
Training robots to interpret the world around them and manipulate objects
Developing natural language processing algorithms for dialogue systems
Predicting health conditions using patient data
CMU has a vibrant intellectual community of faculty and PhD students doing AI research at the frontier of virtually every subfield of AI. Pursuing undergraduate research here can be a valuable way to expand your perspective on AI research, work on open problems in the field, and build skills in analysis, critical thinking, and problem-solving that are transferrable to any future path you might choose.Â
Mentoring enables graduate students to share knowledge and experience with others, who can then benefit from it in their own research careers. Mentoring allows graduate students to pass along what they have learned about navigating research careers, graduate school and fellowship applications, and day-to-day academic life. Many mentors, in addition, find that mentoring sharpens their own thinking and perspective about their work.Â
PAIR exists to connect CMU undergraduates to mentors, promote access to information about research career paths, and provide guidance to assist undergraduates in the following areas:Â
Exploring AI research areas and identifying interestsÂ
Pursuing research opportunities in university and industry labs
Approaching graduate school, internship, and fellowship applications
Making informed decisions about pursuing AI research and future career paths