Turakhia Lab is looking for scientifically curious and highly motivated PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to join. We work at the intersection of computer architecture and computational biology. We develop algorithms and domain-specific hardware accelerators that enable faster and cheaper progress in biology and medicine.

Students with prior experience in one or more of the following research areas:

• Computer Architecture
• High-performance computing (HPC)
• Hardware-Software Co-design
• GPU / FPGA computing
• VLSI Design
• Computational Genomics / Bioinformatics
• ML/AI for Biological Applications

• We’re highly interdisciplinary and publish in top-tier CS (previously ASPLOS, HPCA, SC, CACM etc.) and biological (previously at Nature, Nature Genetics, PNAS, NAR, MBE, PLOS Genetics etc.) research venues. Interdisciplinary research is highly valued in the scientific community, particularly at the intersection of CS and biology. Read this.
• Our research is well-recognized in the community. Our previous research has been awarded ASPLOS best paper award, Micro Top Picks award, HPCA Best Paper Finalist, NVIDIA graduate fellowship, featured in a number of prominent newsletters and blogs, invited for over two dozen industrial and academic talks and keynotes, featured on the cover-page of Communications of the ACM (CACM) and Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE) issues and received multiple gift funding from Microsoft Research, NVIDIA, AMD, and Amazon.
• We have a number of collaborators covering a broad range of expertise. Our past and ongoing collaborators include hardware, software, algorithms, genomics and phylogenetics experts at Stanford University, Genomics Institute of UCSC, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), AMD, Microsoft Research, NVIDIA and Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative. We also have a number of ongoing collaborations at UCSD.
• We are a new lab. This means you get the opportunity to play a significant role in lab activities and establishing a good reputation for the lab. You also benefit from a more hands-on mentoring approach from the advisor.
• We’re located in the amazing city of San Diego
  • UCSD is often ranked among the top 10 engineering schools in the US. UCSD is the largest engineering school on the US west coast and is growing rapidly.
  • UCSD has outstanding research centers, including the Machine-Integrated Computing and Security (MICS) and Center of Microbiome Innovation (CMI), that Turakhia lab is involved with.
  • San Diego is a hub for many tech (Qualcomm, Intel, Apple, Broadcom, Sony, Amazon, Walmart etc.) and biotech (Illumina, Human Longevity Inc, Dexcom, Bionano Genomics, Edico etc.) companies and start-ups that would offer great opportunities for the technology transfer of your research. SD also has a vibrant VC community of its own and is not far from Silicon Valley.
  • UCSD is located in a beautiful campus at a walkable distance from a beach (great for surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving and paragliding all year round!).
  • San Diego is among the world’s best cities to live in and is known for its great beaches, parks, culture, weather and of course, comic-con!

Undergraduate and masters students, please send your PhD program application to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at University of California San Diego (UCSD) by December 16, 2024 (see http://ece.ucsd.edu/graduate/graduate-admissions for full details). Make sure to apply to the Computer Engineering (EC79) specialization and to mention Prof. Turakhia in your application. Once your application is completed, please also send Prof. Turakhia an email with your details at yturakhia@ucsd.edu.

Graduating PhD students who are looking for postdoctoral opportunities, please email yturakhia@ucsd.edu with your CV and a brief description of your research background and interests.