Hairong Wei

Hairong Wei, Professor of Bioinformatics and AI at Michigan Technological University, is recruiting a highly motivated PhD student for a fully funded research assistantship in AI-driven literature mining and hypothesis discovery for sustainable agriculture . The project, AgriMIND , focuses on building AI systems that can discover hidden relationships and generate evidence-supported hypotheses from large-scale scientific literature. Research topics include natural language processing , scientific text mining , large language models , retrieval-augmented generation , transformer models such as SciBERT and PubMedBERT, semantic retrieval , relation extraction , evidence ranking , knowledge graphs , ontology-guided reasoning , machine learning , and deep learning . The work will involve mining large literature collections from sources such as PubAg, AGRICOLA, and PubMed, and developing AI tools for scientific hypothesis generation and evaluation. The long-term goal is to transform fragmented agricultural literature into structured, interpretable knowledge that supports evidence-based discovery across genetics, physiology, agronomy, and environmental science. Preferred applicants have strong training in computer science , artificial intelligence , machine learning , data science , bioinformatics , or a related field. Helpful technical experience includes Python, NLP, transformer models, LLMs, PyTorch or TensorFlow, Hugging Face, knowledge graphs, and large-scale text mining. Prior experience in plant biology or agriculture is not required. The position is located at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan, USA . Funding is fully guaranteed for two years, with the possibility of extension beyond that period. To apply, email [email protected] with a CV, academic transcripts, a brief statement of research interests, and examples of relevant AI/ML projects or publications.