PhD in Computer Science at University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)

Dr. Kenny Zhu, the director of Arlington Computational Linguistics Lab (ACL2) at UT Arlington is inviting applications for fully-funded PhD in CS starting Spring or Fall 2026, working on computational animal linguistics.
Computational Animal Linguistics (CAL), or Animal Language Processing, is a brand-new inter-disciplinary research field where AI, Biology and Linguistics converge. In CAL, we seek to understand why, what and how animal communicates, and develop effective algorithms and systems to decode animal communication. Dr. Zhu and his team has compiled the largest canine vocalization multimedia dataset in the world and has published numerous papers on canine vocalization at top AI conferences such as ACL and ACM Multimedia. His work on decoding the phonemes and words of dogs has recently won the ACL Outstanding Paper Award in 2025.
UTA is a Carnegie R-1 “Very High Research Activity” institution and a Texas Tier One institution. According to the latest USNews Graduate School ranking, the College of Engineering graduate program at UTA is ranked 69th nationally, while its computer science program is ranked 89th nationally. Additionally, UTA's CS research is ranked #60 overall and #52 in NLP by CSRanking.org as of Sept, 2025.
Expected Qualifications from the Applicants:
1) A bachelor degree in computer science or related subjects; Masters degree in CS is a plus;
2) Strong interest and curiosity in animal language processing research;
3) Strong academic integrity;
4) Good health.
For more information about Dr. Kenny Zhu and his lab, please visit:
https://kenzhu2000.github.io/
https://uta-acl2.github.io/
To apply, please email me at kenny.zhu[at]uta[dot]edu with your CV, TOEFL/IELTS and/or GRE scores, and transcripts from your undergraduate and graduate studies (if applicable). Note for 2026 admission, UTA has waived the requirement of GRE scores, but a minimum TOEFL score of 90 and an speaking score of 23 is required.