Join Us

How to reach out

I am actively recruiting PhD students for the upcoming year

See below for how to reach out if you are interested in working with me. I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and University of Michigan undergraduate students.

To make sure I see your email, please make the subject line of your email should follow the format "[Important] Prospective UMich <Position>". For example, if you are a prospective PhD student, the subject line should be "[Important] Prospective UMich PhD Student".

Send your email to: apapalia [at ] umich [dot ] edu

Prospective PhD Students

If you are interested in applying to PhDs, read the information below and then reach out with a short email with your CV and a brief paragraph on what you are interested in working on and why this interests you (any relevant experience is useful to highlight).

I am looking for students who are excited to advance the state of the art in robotics and to tackle fundamental problems in:

• localization, perception, state estimation;
• long-term autonomy for exploring and studying the environment (e.g., information gathering); and
• marrying model-based and data-driven approaches to robotics.

Current University of Michigan Undergraduates

There is a ton of opportunities for motivated undergraduates to get involved in the research in our lab. The work for undergraduates in our lab can be quite varied, from designing/developing/deploying new platforms (there is a lot of potential for hands-on work here) to more algorithmic work (e.g., working on localization, perception, planning, etc.). I am happy to work with you to find a project that matches your interests and skills.

I prefer undergraduate researchers who are available for full-time research in the coming summer or at least 15 hours per week during the academic year. This is because anything less than this makes it hard to make meaningful progress on a project (and thus doesn’t deliver the type of experience either of us want it to be).

Interested? Please send:

• A brief email confirming your availability for the summer or academic year
• Your resume
• Your (unofficial) transcript
• Two short paragraphs explaining why you want to get involved

Postdoctoral Researchers

Send me an email with your CV, three representative publications, and a description of what you are interested in working on.