Congratulations on considering getting a PhD! This is a very exciting time for artificial intelligence and robotics. Graduating with a PhD from my lab will open up a range of unique opportunities, including highly-competitive jobs across the top tech firms, academic positions with a view towards one day setting up your own research group, and startup ideas for those with entrepreneurial ambitions. As a PhD student in the Robot Learning Lab, you will be conducting exciting and ambitious research in a supportive and friendly environment, with state-of-the-art facilities and regular interaction with me and other researchers, and you will have the opportunity to travel internationally to the top conferences and events across the world.

Application criteria
Officially, the minimum requirement for your application to be considered, is a Master's degree with a grade equivalent to a UK distinction. However, please be aware that applications to my lab are highly competitive. Therefore, to be invited to an interview, you would need to have outstanding grades, and you would need to show knowledge and interest in robotics, computer vision, and machine learning, far beyond just the content of your degree's taught modules. For example, this could be demonstrated by any publications you may have, any personal projects outside of your degree, or by writing an informed and interesting research proposal (see below).

How to apply
Candidates should formally apply through the Department of Computing's online application system, and guidelines for this process can be found by clicking here. In the "Academic Programme" field, you should select "Computing Research PhD" (do not select "AI and Machine Learning PhD 4YFT"). In the "Proposed research supervisor" field, you should enter "Edward Johns", and in the "Proposed research group" field, you should enter "The Robot Learning Lab". In the "Proposed research topic field", you should enter a title of your choice, based on your research proposal.

Application timeline
I am now accepting PhD applications for entry in October 2023. Most new PhD students start in my lab in October, but starting dates of January 2023 or April 2023 may also be possible. Formally, there are four application deadlines: 15th October 2022, 15th December 2022, 15th February 2023, and 15th April 2023. After each deadline, applications will be assessed, and some promising candidates will then be invited to an interview. Applications may stay in the system for several weeks or months after the deadline, and may be combined with applications from the next deadline, before any interviews are conducted. If we decide to make you an offer after your interview, then this will be conditional on you securing funding for your PhD. Some students secure their own funding, but most require a funded position, and in this case your application would then be passed to the department's funding committee for further assessment.

Funding
For students seeking a funded position, there are a number of scholarships provided by College, which cover both tuition fees and living expenses in London for the duration of your PhD. The PhD funding committee will assess all candidates who have reached this stage of the assessment, and award funding to the top-ranked candidates. The type of scholarship available to you depends on whether you are a Home student or an Overseas student. You are a Home student if you are a UK National or you have settled / pre-settled status. Otherwise, you are an Overseas student. Click here for more information.

As well as these College scholarships, there are also a number of external scholarships, which you may be eligible for depending on your nationality. Some examples of these external scholarships can be found by clicking here. However, there are other scholarships not listed here, and you should make your own enquires based on your nationality. If you are successful with one of these external scholarships before making your application to Imperial College, then it may increase your chance of receiving a PhD offer. If you have already been awarded an external scholarship, or if you are able to self-fund your PhD through other sources, then you should indicate this on your PhD application form.

Research proposal
Your application should include a research proposal, detailing your thoughts on a new way in which computer vision or machine learning could be used for robot manipulation. This will be used as part of our assessment of your application, and will also form the basis of discussions should you be invited for an interview. If you were to receive an offer, your actual PhD may vary from this proposal, based on my guidance and recent developments. So, rather than being a precise plan for your PhD, the proposal is your chance to showcase your curiosity, creativity, and your ability to rationalise your ideas clearly. Your proposal will be assessed primarily by me, so please write it with a specialist audience in mind. You are free to decide the length and format of your proposal, but I recommend being concise and writing no more than four pages.
 
Research in my lab focusses primarily on robot manipulation from visual observations, and so your proposal should broadly be in this field. In particular, we are interested in real-world robot learning problems, which deal with image observations (rather than assuming access to low-dimensional states), everyday tasks in everyday environments (rather than toy tasks in artificial setups), and the practicalities of real-world data collection (e.g. applying the state-of-the-art Gym reinforcement learning algorithm directly on a real robot, usually does not work... can you think why?).

Examples of current areas of research in our lab are: (i) data-efficient model-based reinforcement learning for real-world robot manipulation, (ii) transferring control policies trained in simulation over to the real world, (iii) learning of new tasks from a small number of human demonstrations, (iv) visual state estimation for object grasping and interaction, and (v) visual scene understanding for planning multi-stage tasks. For further ideas, you may also wish to read up on published work in the lab by clicking here.
 
Try to be creative in your proposal: rather than simply describing background theory and existing methods that have already been published, I encourage you to be brave and describe a new idea you have been thinking about, even if it is preliminary or speculative. Of course, you are not expected to be an expert in the field yet, but you should show that you have sufficient motivation to read around the subject and learn about the state-of-the-art, and sufficient creativity to propose novel ideas which address limitations of existing methods. I suggest that, as well as describing your proposal at a high level, you include a list of specific questions which you aim to answer through your PhD research, and a description of how each one would be addressed. Demonstrate your curiosity, and you will go far.

Contacting me
Please understand that I receive a very large number of emails from applicants, and there is very little feedback I can give you until you have formally made your application. However, I would like to hear from potential applicants in advance of making your application. Therefore, if you would like to get in touch to inform me of your interest in applying, then please do so by sending me an email at e.johns@imperial.ac.uk. So that I know you have read this webpage, please use "PhDApp Xyz Xyz" for the email's subject line, where "Xyz Xyz" is your name.

To catch my attention, my advice is to keep this email brief, and structure it around the following six questions:
    (1) What degree(s) do you have, and at which institution(s)?
    (2) What are your degree grades / GPAs / rankings?
    (3) What is the topic for your primary thesis during your degree?
    (4) Do you have any publications?
    (5) What is your nationality?
    (6) Do you qualify for Home or Overseas funding?
    (7) If you are accepted as a PhD student but you are not awarded funding, would you be able to self-fund your PhD?

As well as these answers, I would be interested to read a brief description about your research interests, and how they are aligned with the research in my lab.

If you have any administrative questions related to your PhD application, such as your eligibility for funding or your English language test scores, or if you would like to check the status of your application, then please contact our PhD administrator, Dr. Amani El-Kholy, at a.o.el-kholy@imperial.ac.uk.

Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you!