Huteng Dai

• Founded 1963, with 15 research faculty
• One of the few departments where phonetics, phonology, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics are all core strengths
• Strong connections with Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science (graduate certificate program), U‑M AI Lab, and MICDE (nation's first PhD in Scientific Computing—available as dual degree)

• Phonetics & Phonology Lab (EMA, sound booth, ultrasound)
• Computational Neurolinguistics Lab (EEG, fMRI)
• Computational Linguistics Lab (Great Lakes HPC cluster, 8-way RTX 6000 GPU)
• Few departments offer this range under one roof

PhD students can take up to 18 credits/term (about 6 courses), no extra tuition—including courses outside your PhD requirements: CS, engineering, statistics, music, whatever you want. It just so happens that U-M is leading in almost every field—your learning experience is only bounded by your own motivation and time.

• You would be surprised by how many activities this town offers.
• Summer is the best season to visit: you will see musicians playing music on the street, and my favorite is the Ann Arbor Art Fair, which turns the entire town into a giant open-air gallery
• One of the few college towns that is more crowded during weekends and holidays
• Check out Stanley Kubrick's photographs of Ann Arbor.

• Here is my take: the cold builds character and discipline
• Once you get used to it, you look forward to the peaceful winter days :)

• Strong background in machine learning and/or formal language theory
• Ability to ask research questions from first principles
• Problem-solving skills. Evidence includes building tools and learning new skills and math as needed

My goal as an advisor is to help my students become future leaders and succeed in academia and beyond.

My advisees choose their own research questions. I hold the work to a reasonably high standard. We set concrete plans together, and I give direct feedback when the work falls short.

My door is always open. I also encourage and support students to seek out other mentors in the department and beyond.

• Please do not email me about PhD admissions—it's also the least effective way to connect.
• Admission decisions are not made by individual faculty here.
• Instead, if you would like to talk about research, find and talk to me at a colloquium or conference, e.g. AMP, SCiL, ACL, EMNLP, LSA