CS Top-Conference PhD Recruitment Roundup — Week of Jun 2, 2026
Five labs run by active NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR / CVPR / ACL authors posted PhD and postdoc openings this week. This inaugural issue covers positions at Waterloo R2L Lab, Singapore Management University, KAIST, CUHK MMLab, and Capital Normal University — with research direction, stipend, deadline, and lab culture notes for each.
Five labs run by active NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR / CVPR / ACL authors posted openings in the past seven days. Each entry below covers the research angle, what the lab has published recently, stipend or salary where disclosed, deadline, and a quick note on what the environment looks like.
1. Postdoctoral Fellow — Agentic AI (R2L Lab, University of Waterloo)
Supervisor: Victor Zhong (Cheriton School of Computer Science)
Role: Postdoctoral Fellow (2-year initial term, 3rd year normally extended)
Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada — in person
Salary: CAD $80,000–$100,000/year plus full University of Waterloo benefits
Deadline: September 10, 2026 (rolling review)
Apply: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32140
The R2L Lab (Reading-to-Learn) publishes at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, TMLR, ACL, EMNLP, and COLM. The posted role is framed around agentic AI — systems that read knowledge, reason over it, and take actions in open-ended environments. The four open research threads are: trustworthy and governable agents, adaptation without retraining, information access for agents, and computer-use agents. The position comes with substantial GPU allocation through the lab, the Vector Institute, and industry partners.
Hard requirement worth noting: the posting explicitly states that applicants without first-author publications at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, TMLR, ACL, EMNLP, COLM, CORL, RSS, CVPR, ICCV, MLSys, or OSDI will not be reviewed. This is one of the clearest top-conference bars in any postdoc posting this week.
Lab culture notes: The PI runs a small group of 5+ senior PhDs. Fellows are expected to co-mentor students and co-author with the PI as a peer, with explicit support for the academic job market and paths to industry research labs or founding roles. Compute is shared with the Vector Institute. 1
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2. PhD / Postdoc / Research Intern — AI for Science, Multimodal LLMs, Trustworthy AI (SMU)
Supervisor: Dongsheng Luo (School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University)
Roles: PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants, remote research interns
Location: Singapore (interns can be remote)
Funding:
- PhD: fully funded through the SCIS PhD in Computing programme (stipend + tuition)
- Postdoc: competitive Singapore salary
- RA/Intern: competitive stipend Deadline: PhD applications close June 30, 2026 (Spring 2027 admission); other roles are rolling Contact: Email CV + short note to the lab address with subject "PhD Application: SMU" or the relevant role
Prof. Luo is an incoming Presidential Assistant Professor. Research directions span ML for scientific discovery (environmental science and healthcare applications), reasoning over text, structured, temporal, and multimodal data, explainability and robustness for trustworthy AI, and methods for large complex datasets. Postdoc applicants should have a strong publication record at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, KDD, or AAAI.
Lab culture notes: The group offers dedicated computational resources, generous conference travel support, and active academic and industry collaborations. The lab is new and growing, which means early members shape the research agenda. 2
3. Postdoctoral Researcher — Embedded AI, Edge Computing, AI Systems (KAIST)
Supervisor: Seulki Lee (Associate Professor, EE / Department of AI Systems, KAIST)
Role: Postdoctoral Researcher
Location: KAIST, South Korea
Start: Fall 2026 or Spring 2027
Funding: Competitive salary and benefits; access to GPU clusters, embedded platforms, and robotics systems
Deadline: Rolling until filled
Contact: sl.lee@kaist.ac.kr or through the application form on the lab site
The KAIST Embedded AI Lab focuses on on-device intelligence: systems that learn, reason, and adapt directly on resource-constrained hardware such as robots, vehicles, wearables, smartphones, and IoT platforms. Research threads include on-device AI agents, physical AI, AIoT, edge inference, and secure/confidential AI. Target venues are NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ACL, EMNLP, MLSys, ASPLOS, OSDI, SOSP, MobiSys, MobiCom, and SenSys.
Lab culture notes: The role includes opportunities to mentor students and develop independent research directions. The posting invites prospective MS/PhD candidates for 2026/2027 in addition to postdocs. 3
4. PhD Students — Embodied AI, Robotic Manipulation, Multimodal Models (CUHK)
Supervisor: Hongsheng Li (Multimedia Laboratory, Department of Electronic Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Role: PhD Students
Intake: 2027
Location: Hong Kong
Funding: Not disclosed on homepage; CUHK PhD positions are typically funded via RA stipend
Contact: hsli@ee.cuhk.edu.hk
Prof. Li was just promoted to Full Professor (effective August 1, 2026) after running the lab since 2015. The group published 27 papers at ICML, CVPR, ICLR, and AAAI in 2026 alone, plus 3 papers at ACL 2026 and 13 at NeurIPS 2025. Current research focuses include Embodied AI (robotic manipulation and planning), Multimodal Large Language Models (GUI agents, mobile perception, vision-language reasoning), diffusion-based video/image generation, and autonomous driving. The 2027 PhD openings target those areas specifically.
Lab culture notes: CUHK MMLab is one of the most prolific academic groups in computer vision globally. Students collaborate with industry partners through the InternImage, LMDrive, and OpenPCDet open-source ecosystems. The lab has dense international connections via former members who have moved to top research labs and faculty positions. 4
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5. Faculty and Research Positions — All Ranks, Across AI Disciplines (Capital Normal University)
Institution: College of Artificial Intelligence, Capital Normal University (CNU), Beijing
Roles: Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, Researcher, Associate Researcher, Assistant Researcher (all tenured, 事业编)
Location: Haidian District, Beijing (near Baidu, ByteDance, MSRA, Zhongguancun Science Park)
Deadline: Rolling; no fixed deadline
Apply: Send a single PDF to t116@cnu.edu.cn
CNU's College of AI is actively recruiting early-career researchers including those concluding appointments in 2026–2029, and the posting is designed to align offer timing with career transitions. Required profile: PhD in CS, ECE, Statistics, Mathematics or a closely related field, with a strong publication record at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, SIGIR, or AAAI. The target research disciplines span ML theory, computer vision (3D, video, generative AI, multimodal), NLP and LLMs, graph learning, AI for healthcare and science, autonomous systems, trustworthy AI, and efficient AI.
Compensation: Competitive by international standards, with China's lower effective tax rates increasing take-home pay. Positions are also eligible for national and Beijing municipal research grants that can fund students, lab equipment, and salary supplements on top of the base package.
Lab culture notes: CNU has 40,000+ students and 3,000+ faculty. The Haidian location gives faculty and students close access to tech companies for internships, collaboration, and industry grants. The posting explicitly encourages applications from women and underrepresented groups. 5
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Quick comparison
| Lab / Institution | Role | Location | Stipend / Salary | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R2L Lab, Univ. of Waterloo | Postdoc | Waterloo, Canada | CAD $80K–$100K/yr | Sep 10, 2026 |
| SMU SCIS | PhD / Postdoc / Intern | Singapore (intern remote-ok) | Fully funded PhD; competitive postdoc | Jun 30, 2026 (PhD) |
| KAIST Embedded AI Lab | Postdoc | KAIST, South Korea | Competitive (not disclosed) | Rolling |
| CUHK MMLab | PhD | Hong Kong | Not disclosed | 2027 intake |
| CNU College of AI | Faculty (all ranks) | Beijing, China | Competitive + grants | Rolling |
Notes on this edition
This is the inaugural issue. The five openings above were verified against their original posting pages as of June 4, 2026. Positions at R2L Lab and SMU link directly to structured listing pages. The CUHK and CNU postings are sourced from faculty lab pages and an academic jobs board respectively. The KAIST listing was posted within the past four days.
Each subsequent issue will cover openings posted in the seven days before the Monday publication date.
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