Fall 2018/Winter 2019 Research Positions

Fall 2018/Winter 2019 Research Positions

Update: Thank you to everyone who has applied with the lab. It was exciting to see so much interest. We have added 8 new research assistants and 8 new independent study students to the lab. This was really the maximum we could do for next semester.

The Information Interaction Lab at the University of Michigan School of Information is looking for up to three new master’s students to assist with a range of ongoing AR/VR projects. We offer two types of positions:

  • technical positions focus on technological aspects and typically involve a variety of programming and technical HCI research tasks around emerging toolkits and tools;
  • design positions focus on HCI/UX and interaction design aspects and typically involve complex UX design tasks and experimentation with new kinds of prototyping methods.

We are looking for students with solid AR/VR design and development experience. Students that have completed Professor Nebeling’s SI 559 AR/VR Application Design, or have completed workshops as part of the Alternate Reality Initiative (ARI) run by Michael Zhang and others, are especially encouraged to apply. For technical positions, you should consider yourself an expert in Unity and/or Three.js/A-Frame, and have experience working with AR frameworks including HoloToolkit, Tango, ARCore, ARKit, AR.js, etc. For design positions, we expect that you are familiar with state-of-the-art prototyping methods and tools.

We realize that there is only a tiny fraction of students at U-M that have such a background, so a compromise might be that you can at least demonstrate significant front-end design and development experience, and the potential to quickly navigate the AR/VR space and learn a range of new technologies as required for our ongoing research projects.

For students with the required background and skills, positions can be converted into paid temporary research assistant positions (pay commensurate with experience) after a short trial period. For students that do not yet have the necessary experience, but want to deepen their knowledge in AR/VR as they are experimenting with new devices and technologies, we also consider independent study projects. Finally, we have been working with several UROP students over the years and are always eager to consider new UROP applicants as well. 

If you think that could be you, please send an email to Michael Nebeling. Make sure to include a short paragraph about yourself and your interests in working with us. If you have it ready, please also include a CV.