FAQ

A 4-year cross-disciplinary graduate training program for LUCID Trainees.

Its goal is to provide graduate students from Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology and Educational Psychology with hands-on cross disciplinary training and experience working on problems at the intersection of machine learning, human cognition, and education, and to prepare trainees for both academic and non-academic career paths.

The program includes project-focused prof-and-peer mentoring, cross-disciplinary collaboration & research experience, professional development, and non-academic research project experience.

For more information see LUCID Overview

LUCID Trainees are graduate students at UW–Madison interested in research projects that have both a computational and behavioral aspects.

Meet our LUCID Trainees

For information on becoming a LUCID Trainee: Apply

Any pure or applied research problem in which people are learning from machines (educational software, intelligent tutoring, second-language learning, MOOCs, etc), machines are learning from people (crowd sourcing, social network analysis, emotion recognition, natural language processing, etc), or human learning can be illuminated and improved through application of computational insights. The aim is to train scientists who can advance understanding within each core discipline by applying information and insights from the others, and who can bring the central ideas from each field to bear on real-world issues.

For Examples Please See Our Projects Page

If you are a graduate student at UW­–Madison please see our Students Welcome (coming soon!)

If you are in industry, non-profit, profit, or government agency and have a project you would like to collaborate with us on please see LUCID Partner

If you would like more information regarding nominating a student to be a LUCID Trainee or interested in applying, see Apply

First Year
-Complete your IDP my.grad.wisc.edu/DiscoverPD/Assessment, complete and submit your TDP to the program manager
-Identify mentor and cross-disciplinary mentor
-Complete first basic research project
-Attend LUCID brownbag (aka LUCID Seminar) and HAMLET
-Complete and submit 2 (one/semester) non-traditional communication project and/or plan

Second Year
-Meet with your cross-disciplinary mentor
-Meet with your mentor to discuss in-house and external research projects
-Initiate Non-Academic/Non-traditional Partner Internship/Consultation Project
-Join a cross-disciplinary research team
-Attend LUCID brownbag (aka LUCID Seminar) and HAMLET
-Complete and submit 2 (one/semester) non-traditional communication project and/or plan

Third Year
-Meet with your cross-disciplinary mentor
-Meet with your mentor to discuss in-house and external research projects
-Complete (if not already) Non-Academic/Non-traditional Partner Internship/Consultation Project
-Continue to work with your cross-disciplinary research team
-Attend LUCID brownbag (aka LUCID Seminar) and HAMLET
-Complete and submit 2 (one/semester) non-traditional communication project and/or plan

Fourth Year/Senior Mentor
-Assist Trainees on research project collaborations
-Attend/Guest Lecture LUCID Seminar & HAMLET
-Eligible for conference travel stipends

See Checklist

Trainees can enter through any of the core departments and will complete all the usual requirements of their home departments. The training program enhances this traditional training through several additional mechanisms that are designed to promote cross-disciplinary learning without increasing time to degree. These include:

– Project-focused prof-and-peer mentoring. LUCID adopts a “learning-by-doing” approach, in which cross- disciplinary expertise is acquired partly through active participation in cross-disciplinary research teams. Throughout the course of their training, LUCID students will work in small groups with students and professors from other disciplines, collaborating on specific cross-disciplinary research projects. Working in cross-disciplinary pairs under tutelage of two professors and a senior graduate student, trainees will each complete two such projects in the first three years. The first will have a pure-research focus and will be completed in the first year; the second, to be completed in year 2 or 3, will be of interest to a non- academic LUCID partner in industry, government, or the nonprofit sector. In the final years of their degree trainees will serve as senior mentors on projects for incoming trainees.

– Individualized curriculum development. Each trainee will work with mentors to develop an extra- disciplinary course plan in which the optional courses permitted by their home department are chosen to provide specific training relevant to their cross-disciplinary project focus. This approach will allow trainees to acquire explicit training outside their discipline without increasing time to degree. In addition, trainees will participate in a weekly seminar series focused on human and machine learning, education and teaching (HAMLET).

– On- and off-site internships. In the second or third year of the program, each trainee pair will collaborate on a research project of specific interest to a non-academic partner (NAP) institution. Project topics will be developed through conversation with the NAP and LUCID faculty, but students will remain on campus while working on these projects, allowing them to continue with coursework requirements and regular meetings with advisors and other trainees. Some of the current NAPs include DuoLinguo, Carnegie Learning, Microsoft Research, Pinterest, Technicolor, and the Institute for Research on Poverty. New NAPs will be recruited on a rolling basis. Following completion of the project trainee pairs will present the results to the partner institution in a written document and oral presentation, and may have the option of completing an off-site internship over the summer at the NAP location.

– Social media outreach, LUCID library. LUCID Trainees will learn to communicate about science in a variety of non-academic outlets. LUCID staff will curate and maintain a robust social-media outreach effort via Twitter, the LUCID blog, and a Youtube channel. All trainees will contribute content for these efforts and will receive periodic training about non-academic writing and social outreach through the HAMLET seminar series. In addition, trainees will contribute to the LUCID online library, a wiki-based system that will explain central concepts in core domains and their cross-disciplinary application in accessible language.

– LUCID summer conference and retreat. Once per year at the end of summer LUCID will host a mini- conference and retreat, during which trainees and program associates across campus will present results of their research and plan new directions and projects. The conference will also feature a keynote address from a prominent scientist whose work spans machine learning, cognition, and education.

Trainees who are US citizens or permanent residents are eligible to receive up to two years (24 months) of support including tuition, benefits, and a stipend paying $34,000 per year in salary. This support will be awarded to applicants by the Steering Committee based on eligibility, need, equity across core Departments, promotion of STEM diversity, and fit to potential projects. Students who do not receive a LUCID fellowship but have other sources of funding are still welcome to enroll in the training program, and are eligible to apply for other forms of support including for travel to conferences and small grants to support LUCID related research projects.

In summary, LUCID funding provides two full years of support, and also comes with some additional training requirements. Specifically, trainees must:

– Collaborate on a primary research project across disciplinary boundaries, typically in their first program year.

– Work on an “in house” internship (ie, while remaining here on campus) with an external partner in industry/government/nonprofit sector in one of their program years.

– Attend a weekly brownbag as well as the HAMLET seminar series

– Communicate their science through a non-traditional venue (op ed, video, blog post, science fair, etc) once per semester

– Serve as a “senior mentor” to newer students later in the program.