Siebel School SRP Lunch and Learn: Grad School 101 & Career Paths with a MS or PhD - Minje Kim, Sarah Sterman and Luyi Xing 06302026

Abstract

Grad School 101 & Career Paths with a MS or PhD

This session will include information about graduate school from both the student and faculty perspective. It will address questions such as: What is grad school like? How is it different from undergrad? How do you pay for it? Is it for everyone? Masters vs. PhD--what do these degrees do for you? Do you need to put your life on hold when you are in grad school? What are some of the best things about grad school?

Speakers

Minje Kim
Minje Kim is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an Amazon Scholar. Before then, he was an Associate Professor at Indiana University (2016-2023). He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at UIUC (2016). He worked as a researcher at ETRI, a national lab in Korea, from 2006 to 2011. He received his Master's and Bachelor's degrees in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at POSTECH (Summa Cum Laude) and in the Division of Information and Computer Engineering at Ajou University (with honors) in 2006 and 2004, respectively. During his career as a researcher, he has focused on developing machine learning models for audio signal processing applications. He has been on more than 60 patents as an inventor. 

Sarah Sterman 
My research seeks to understand creative process and build novel computational creativity support tools to enhance creative work across domains including writing, CS education, and design. I apply a computational lens to creativity research, drawing on technical skills from computer science and design in combination with other disciplines, including the humanities, to expand the communities, values, and ways of working that our software tools support. I lead the Process, Interaction, and Creativity Lab (PICL) at UIUC.

I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, where I worked in human computer interaction with Eric Paulos in the Hybrid Ecologies Lab at UC Berkeley. I received an MS in Computer Science and a BS in Product Design from Stanford University.

Luyi Xing
I am an Associate Professor in Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). I'm founder and director of System Security Foundations Lab (SSF-Lab) at UIUC. Prior to UIUC, I was an Assistant Professor, then Associate Professor at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington. Before academia, I dedicated a few years building/engineering large production systems at Amazon/AWS. I am a recipient of Outstanding Junior Faculty Award of Indiana University Bloomington (class of 2024), NSF CAREER award (2021, cloud-based IoT systems security), Facebook Research Award (2021, Privacy Enhancing Technologies), 5 Facebook Whitehat awards (2012, 2013, 2020, 2021), Google Developer Data Protection award (2019), Microsoft Whitehat award (2019), Android Security Acknowledgements (2013 - 2016, 2018), Apple Security Acknowledgement (2015, 2019, 2020), among others.

Research I led has significantly and extensively changed security design (access control, authentication, isolation) in apps/systems that people use everyday, across AI agents, Android, iOS/iPad/MacOS, Chrome, Apple Home (HomeKit), Google Home, SmartThings, Facebook, AWS IoT, Azure IoT, etc., which have implemented and deployed our security designs/protections. My research is featured with formal methods and guarantees for security and privacy-compliance in systems, in particular, IoT, cloud, mobile, and software supply chain. My research have led to the discovery of 60+ new types of vulnerabilities in the design of commercial and open-source systems, uncovering novel attack techniques. What my group focused on are typically fundamental design challenges (see our media reports and publications), versus implementation bugs/mistakes. Our research has been reported by Time, CNN, Forbes, Mirror, Fox News, Yahoo, CNET, The Register, and more.

I'm a co-inventor of the AI agent communication standard called Natural Language Interaction Protocol (NLIP). Just as TCP/IP turned heterogeneous networks into a single Internet and HTTP unified document exchange, NLIP’s goal is to standardize the envelope, control signals, and policy semantics by which intelligent agents exchange information in natural language (and other modalities). The Natural Language Interaction Protocol (NLIP) is envisioned as the common wiring layer for the next generation of AI/reasoning systems.  Whether those agents speak on behalf of people, devices, cloud services, or entire organizations, NLIP supplies the predictable substrate that lets them cooperate safely and efficiently. See https://nlip-project.org and https://ecma-international.org/technical-committees/tc56/.