Open Ph.D. Positions in Guo Cheng's Lab at TAMU-CC
Hiring Ph.D. students starting Fall 2026 / Spring 2027 / Fall 2027. Topics: Computer Vision, Autonomous Driving, Deep Learning, Vision-Language Models, Trustworthy AI. Interested? See How to apply.
What will I provide as a Ph.D. advisor?
- Funded Ph.D. positions in Computer Science at TAMU-CC, aligned with active research projects in computer vision and autonomous driving.
- Comprehensive, patient, and responsible research training — from framing a problem and reading the literature, to running experiments, writing papers, and presenting at top-tier venues.
- A friendly, supportive research environment with access to GPU compute for deep-learning and autonomous-driving research.
- Strong support for collaborations, industry internships (I have built connections at Bloomberg, ClearObject, and across IEEE communities), award nominations, job hunting, and long-term career development.
- Hands-on engineering rigor. Drawing on my industry experience at Bloomberg L.P. and ClearObject, I emphasize reproducible code, MLOps, scalable deployment, and the engineering discipline that distinguishes a paper from a system.
- Bridges between research and impact. Many of my Ph.D. projects were funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center. I value problems where the science clearly serves a real application.
What do I expect from you?
- Be responsible and self-motivated. A Ph.D. is a long, uncertain journey. These two traits matter more than any single skill on your resume.
- Be curious and able to think in depth. When a new idea catches your attention, do you enjoy following it all the way down?
- Solid foundations in mathematics (probability, statistics, linear algebra, calculus) and coding (Python is required; C++ is a plus).
- Experience with modern ML/AI tooling — PyTorch or TensorFlow, Hugging Face, LangChain/RAG, OpenCV, Git, Docker. You don't need all of these, but you should be comfortable picking them up quickly.
- A Bachelor's degree (or higher) in computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, statistics, or a related area.
- Bonus: prior publications at venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, WACV, BMVC, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI, IJCAI, EMNLP, ACL, KDD, ICRA, IROS, T-PAMI, T-ITS, IV, ITSC, or ICPR.
Research topics I am excited about
- Vision-Language Models (VLMs) for perception — understanding when and why they fail under perceptual degradation, and how to make them robust.
- Sequential / streaming scene understanding for autonomous driving: semantic segmentation, detection, and tracking with strict memory and latency budgets.
- Vision-Language-Action models for driving and robotics.
- Trustworthy AI — robustness, calibration, monitoring, and safe deployment of ML systems in regulated, safety-critical domains.
- Efficient inference on edge devices — quantization, distillation, and architecture design for real-time deployment.
Why TAMU-CC Computer Science?
- Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi is a growing campus of the Texas A&M University System, home to the "Island University" — the only university in the United States located on its own island.
- The Department of Computer Science is part of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, with growing research strength in AI, computer vision, cybersecurity, and data science.
- Texas is a hub for AI and autonomous driving research with major industry presence (autonomous trucking, robotics, aerospace, energy) and active collaboration opportunities across the Texas A&M System.
- TAMU-CC sits next to the Gulf of America, with strong research programs in coastal, marine, and unmanned systems — a natural fit for computer vision and autonomous systems applied to drones, USVs, and environmental monitoring.
Why Corpus Christi, TX?
- Corpus Christi is a coastal city on the Gulf of America with a mild climate, miles of beaches, and a much lower cost of living than other major U.S. tech hubs.
- Easy access to Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and the rest of Texas by car, and direct flights from Corpus Christi International Airport.
- A welcoming, diverse community with a strong maritime, energy, and aerospace presence, plus emerging tech and AI activity across South Texas.
How to apply
Please send me an email with the subject line:
TAMU-CC CS Ph.D. Application by [YOUR NAME]
Please include:
- A short description of your research interests (a few paragraphs).
- Your CV.
- Your undergraduate (and graduate, if applicable) transcript.
- A representative writing sample — a paper, preprint, course project report, or thesis chapter.
- Links to any code you are proud of (GitHub, project pages).
I read every email and reply when I can — please be patient if it takes me a little while. You must also apply through the TAMU-CC Ph.D. program's official online application; an email to me alone is not enough.
Hope to see you in Corpus Christi!