Prospective Students

Prospective Undergraduate Students:

If you are an undergraduate student interested in working with us, you must meet the following requirements:

• Able to work at least 5-10 hours a week

• Self-motivation and an interest in researching reasoning

• Willingness to do the kind of work few others in the world are doing

• An ability to tackle new and difficult problems in creative ways

• Ideally: Some background (either through coursework or your own independent studies) in one of the topics we research.

• Strong preference for students who have already taken: data structures and algorithms, an AI class, and a machine learning or NLP course (if you haven't yet been able to take one at USF, a good idea is to work through the Stanford NLP course online). If you are looking to take an Independent study or Supervised research credit, that is a plus.

Students who have been working with me a few semesters and have proven themselves capable of research may be eligible for paid research positions, and the chance to be involved in research publications. I also offer for-credit options, through independent study or supervised research. If you are interested, please take a good look at our areas of research, and contact Dr. Licato with a CV or résumé that clearly shows your relevant experience, interests, and coursework, and discusses which of our papers you've read and your thoughts on some area of our research.

How to participate. If you're a good fit, then there are at least two ways you can participate:

1. Volunteer. You can join the lab as a volunteer, in which case your obligations are minimal. But I'm also very selective about who I take on as a volunteer. If it appears that you're going to be a student who just sits silently in lab meetings and doesn't do much else, then I'm sorry, but you're not a good fit.

2. Course Credit. You can sign up for an independent study or supervised research credit; these are 3 credit courses offered through the CSE department (note that there are course prerequisites for these).

Things to NOT do: I often see students making the following mistakes in contacting me. Try to avoid these:

• Contact me without reading this site thoroughly. I'm looking for people who can be independent researchers, and if you can't show that you're capable enough to find this website and read it (or worse, you ask me what the URL is), I won't have confidence you'll be a good researcher.

• Expect me to do your work for you. I want to see that you have taken the time to read my papers, really understand what my lab is trying to do, and figure out how you can contribute. I do not have the luxury of taking on students whose hands I have to hold with every little task. I'll guide you, but I won't drag you along.

• Use a bot to generate your email. This is a lab that does NLP research, led by a professor who teaches the NLP class. We know how to use ChatGPT. We're not looking for researchers who aren't going to do the work required.

• Use general platitudes. If you find yourself writing an email that says "I see you do a lot of research in AI, and I think it's interesting" and not much more, it's a huge red flag that you didn't actually take the time to understand what my lab is working on. That doesn't bode well for my confidence in your abilities. If you want to stand out, talk about papers we've published (and don't just say "I thought it was cool") to show me you have the ability to do research and come up with ideas on your own.

Prospective Graduate Students:

I am open to considering applications for the Computer Science PhD program. Although I am primarily supervising students in the computer science department, I am interested in working with students from other departments as well (e.g., psychology, philosophy, mathematics), as long as you can contribute to one of the lab's research areas. Please contact Dr. Licato for more information. Of my graduate students, I require the following:

• The ability to help manage teams of undergraduate students.

• At the moment, I am specifically looking for graduate students with one or more of the following skill sets. Although inexperience in all of these areas does not disqualify you, I will show preference to students who are skilled in some subset of:

  • • Natural language processing (NLP)

    • Cognitive modeling / cognitive architectures

    • Human reasoning / Cognitive biases / Psychology of reasoning

    • Argumentation and rhetoric

    • Any of our other areas of research.

• Before contacting, make sure you have some familiarity with, and interest in, my (Dr. Licato's) research areas. If you just send a copy-pasted email, I'll be able to tell you didn't do your homework. You can get started by reading some of my recent publications. I want to see emails that specifically address the following:

  • • What your experience is in my research areas, or areas that are closely related. Be specific.

    • What are some specific areas or ideas you're interested in working on if I take you on as a student, and how they relate to AMHR's work? What are some larger questions that keep you awake at night? What have you done to seek answers to these questions? For example:

      • "I have always wanted to know what allows people to accept certain types of arguments and not others. Over the past few years, I've studied [something], and their view is that [some interesting view]. I think we can implement this in AI by [some idea]. This relates to your lab because you have written about [something relevant]."

    • What year you're in, your GRE scores, and what degree you're interested in pursuing

    • When I read your emails, I'm looking for signs that you're truly interested in the topics listed above, and have the potential to go through the long, rigorous, training process that is involved in earning a PhD. Don't make your email look like you just copy-pasted my name, my research lab, and some catch phrases into some form letter.

    • Send a resume/CV and some publications, if any.

If you think you meet a sufficient amount of these requirements, contact Dr. Licato today!