We have openings at all levels of education. If you don't see anything that fits you, yet you have a burning desire to do science, please email me at tianchen@uh.edu. I especially encourage minorities (racial, gender, and other forms of minorities) to apply.
PhD Vacancies
PhD students at UH are fully funded and automatically qualifies for a tuition waiver for 4 years. PhDs must complete a number of courses and conduct sufficient original research to graduate. The salary allows PhD students to live comfortably in Houston. Please see timeline for more information on the life of a PhD, and UH guidelines for more detail.
We are hiring PhD students at the intersection of mechanical engineering, applied physics, computer graphics, and material science. The candidate should be comfortable with both experimental methods and simulation tools for the analysis of problems in these fields. In particular, we would like you to work on one of the following exciting topics:
Design of reprogrammable mechanical meta-material
Micro-fabrication and characterization of mechanical meta-materials
If you are interested, please send your cover letter, C.V., and a list of references to tianchen@uh.edu. Please start your email title as PhD Application, and in your email briefly discuss this question: How you would improve one of our published works.
More information can be found at UH admissions. Note that we may not reply to all applications.
Post-docs
If you want to join our lab as a post-doc please email me directly. If you already have a scholarship or planning on applying for one with me as a potential host, please, by all means, email me as well! There are numerous funding sources specifically targeting post-docs.
Bachelor and master students
I got my first taste of research as a summer research assistant (a long time ago), and I enjoyed it immensely. Bachelor and master Research Assistants (RA) are typically volunteer positions, being a RA allows the students to learn how to conduct research in a professional environment and are of great benefits to one’s resume. However, there are numerous scholarship opportunities.
- The Provost’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship (PURS) funds $1000 for undergraduate students to conduct research during the semester on a 8 per week basis.
- The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship provides bachelor students with a scholarship of $4000 dollars to conduct research over the summer for 10 weeks at 40 hours a week.
- Also check out Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) opportunities for funded research opportunities.
Please get in touch with me at tianchen@uh.edu if you are interested in applying so we can put the best application forward.
Visiting scholars
Do you want to spend a summer or two during your PhD or postdoc at our lab? These can be extremely productive, and a fun way to discover another lab, university, and city. I did this during my PhD, leading to three months of intense research in balmy California.