We have 1 Ph.D. and 1 postdoc position in Spring or Fall 2026! Female and underrepresented students with VLA, foundation models, and reinforcement learning backgrounds are highly encouraged to apply! Please email Dr. Zhao with your interest.

The LIDAR group continuously looks for highly self-motivated students. We are receiving many emails every semester so please be patient if you have not heard back from us for a few days. We will get back to you if your background could be a good fit for the lab. You are also highly recommended to read the following information before you send your inquiry email.

Graduate Students

If you are currently Georgia Tech graduate students, please send the following materials in your email: CV/resume, 1-2 representative papers/reports/documents that can demonstrate your academic research capabilities, and 2-3 reference points of contact. I usually don’t schedule individual meetings unless the lab has an impending demand in specific directions or your background matches well.

If you are non-GT students and looking for graduate research positions, please submit your application via the GT graduate school system. You can apply for the Georgia Tech Mechanical Engineering or Robotics Ph.D. program with Mechanical Engineering as your home department. If you get admitted, please reach out to me early January or February and we can discuss if there is a match. A list of Georgia Tech fellowships is here. 

Visiting Scholars and Postdocs

If you are looking for a visiting scholar position, please attach the materials mentioned above in your email and explicitly indicate your visiting period (starting and ending dates), and a supporting letter (or at least email contact info) from your current advisor. Our school has a policy on a maximum number of visiting scholars at one period, so the visiting position may not be always available. Being flexible in the visiting period could be helpful.

The lab currently does not have an opening position for a postdoc.

Undergraduate Students

If you are Georgia Tech undergraduate students, we have a VIP project structured in the form of several sub-teams. You can join the team for course credit. With this level of time commitment, the PI can structure a specific project producing expectable outcomes. If you would like to bring a new project that could complement current lab research projects, please explicitly state that in your email and elaborate on how that project will contribute to the lab research. If you want to register ME specific problems for credit, a standard requirement is to write a mid-term report (2-3 pages) and a 6-page final report for your research project.

Additionally, undergraduate students can volunteer in research. For an (incomplete) list of on-going/planned projects, please visit our VIP page. If you are interested to join one of the teams, please contact the mentor of that project directly.