Postdoctoral fellows grow research at Virginia Tech
Two new postdoctoral fellows in the Department of Computer Science have joined the growing ranks of independent scholars contributing to the discipline while growing their nascent careers.
The Department of Computer Science recently added its first two Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows, JinYi Yoon and Adithya Kulkarni.
They join the ranks of more than 200 postdoctoral scholars working across every Virginia Tech college and institute to advance the pursuit of knowledge and develop into the next generation of experts in their fields.
In 2022, to support the capacity of postdoctoral fellows to initiate innovative and exciting projects, the university established the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs to serve this important community.
“Our office sees our mission as supporting postdoctoral scholars through program and resource sharing so they can develop the skills and confidence they need to excel as researchers and also go out and serve the world in whatever career they choose, post-postdoc,” said Chris Smith, postdoctoral affairs program administrator.
That same year, the competitive Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship was established. It seeks to strengthen the university’s ability to recruit outstanding, diverse postdoctoral associates by offering up to two years of salary and benefits, $10,000 for training and professional development, as well as formal mentoring. The fellowship is offered twice a year.
Yoon and Kulkarni talked about their work and their hopes for the program
JinYi Yoon
- Research focus: Machine learning-driven networked systems
- Education: Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, where she studied computer science and engineering and graduated with an outstanding dissertation award. She has broad interests in the area of machine learning-driven networked systems, and her current research focuses on edge intelligence and federated/split/distributed learning.
Please explain what a postdoctoral fellow is and what you'll be doing for the department and the university. Why did you choose Virginia Tech for your postdoctoral work?
A postdoctoral fellow is a researcher who holds a doctoral degree and is involved in advanced research. My primary goal is to contribute to Virginia Tech through conducting high-quality research. Additionally, I aim to share my experience by mentoring graduate students and participating in grant writing initiatives. I aspire to nurture long-term collaborations for sustained research projects and draw diverse international researchers to the university.
Virginia Tech offers an ideal environment for my research interests due to its strong faculty expertise, research centers, and industry collaborations. These centers facilitate potential collaborations with artificial intelligence (AI) experts, while the university's partnerships with industries perfectly align with my research focus on edge intelligence and intelligent network systems.
Also, I am working with Bo Ji, and his work in machine learning (ML), networking, security/privacy, and mixed reality, particularly in edge intelligence, aligns well with my research objectives. His mentorship, conference organization, academic networking, grant pursuit, and curriculum development opportunities are essential for my future career as an educator, and I anticipate collaborating with other mentors and fellows to enhance our collective efforts. In addition to that, I really like Blacksburg.
What are you hoping to accomplish with your postdoctoral research?
Certainly, the most important focus is to conduct high-quality research in collaboration with Virginia Tech. My research interests are centered around machine learning-driven networked systems, particularly in the domains of edge intelligence and federated/split learning. Edge intelligence, also known as edge AI, refers to AI on edge devices such as smartphones or other devices located close to where data is generated, often near the user.
Although this area is both timely and captivating, it necessitates an understanding of both networking and AI concepts. While I currently align more closely with networked systems researchers, I aim to use my time at the university to develop into a proficient ML-driven networked systems researcher. I am deeply committed to becoming a researcher and educator, and this fellowship presents an invaluable opportunity to advance toward these goals, contributing to the ongoing research endeavors at Virginia Tech. I am very excited about collaborating with fellow postdoctoral researchers across diverse fields of study with the guidance of respected mentors, and this collaboration sets the stage for sustained research projects.
What advice do you have for students interested in becoming a postdoctoral fellow?
It’s quite a challenging question, as this is my first postdoc position. So far, I've come to realize that it is important to clarify long-term career goals and research interests. While it is possible to explore a wide range of research areas, as a postdoc and independent researcher, having a specific — yet flexible — focus can be advantageous. This does not mean doing the same things as before; instead, I want to emphasize the need to broaden your research experience without losing sight of your unique perspective.
Although it may be difficult to find a university or research institution that aligns with your research interests, once you secure a position, I believe the postdoc experience becomes invaluable for building professional relationships with fellow researchers and peers in your field, extending beyond the scope of your Ph.D. studies.
Adithya Kulkarni
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Agartala, and master’s and doctorate degrees in computer science from Iowa State University
- Hometown: Hyderabad, India
- Research areas: Data mining, machine learning, and natural language processing
Please explain what a postdoctoral fellow is and what you'll be doing for the department and the university.
The postdoctoral fellowship is a research-oriented position to train me for the next steps in my career and help me grow as a researcher, mentor, and lecturer. As a postdoctoral fellow, I will be combining the power of graph learning and large language models (LLMs) to develop approaches that enable explainability, interpretability, replicability, and, thus, the general robustness of LLMs. Furthermore, I will be mentoring graduate students working with my advisors Dr. Dawei Zhou and Dr. Lifu Huang. I plan to teach introductory computer science courses at Virginia Tech.
Why did you choose Virginia Tech for your postdoctoral work?
I adore the research work conducted by my advisors, Dawei Zhou and Lifu Huang. With their mentorship and guidance, I want to strengthen my research capabilities and increase the scope of my research. Furthermore, I learned about the exceptional training and support the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs provides to help postdocs grow professionally. I also wanted to be part of the vibrant community at Virginia Tech.
What are you hoping to accomplish with your postdoctoral research?
With my research, I plan to address hallucination issues faced by LLMs and overcome the requirement of labeled data for training LLMs. My research will apply to many domains, such as e-commerce, biomedicine, social networks, and natural language processing in general. Within computer science research, my work will drive research forward toward LLM explainability, interpretability, and general robustness. My postdoctoral research will continuously generate research papers, workshops, and tutorials on natural language processing, AI, data mining, and machine learning conferences.
What advice do you have for students interested in becoming a postdoctoral fellow?
A postdoctoral fellowship will help you strengthen your understanding of the research in your field of study and help you grow as a researcher and mentor. You will learn to become an independent researcher and gain mentorship experience, which will be pivotal to having a successful career both as a research faculty or as a researcher in a corporate setting. The experience of your advisors will help you gain exposure to research, grant writing, and teaching courses, which are seldom learned during a Ph.D. Virginia Tech has exceptional postdoctoral training and support, and I suggest becoming a postdoctoral fellow to grow professionally.
Written by Tayler Butters, a senior English major in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
