Applying

Please view the specific instructions for PhD applicants and for other applicants. For PhD applicants, CSD will review applications once per year after they are due in December.

Note that we have limited bandwidth / funding in our lab and unfortunately do not have the resources to respond to all inquiries. You may email Chris directly about your application, though this will not guarantee a response. See this FAQ from Yonatan Bisk at CMU LTI for some great general guidance on how/when to email professors and what to expect.

PhD applicants

G-CLef is looking to recruit PhD students for a Fall 2027 start date. If you're interested, please formally apply to the CMU CSD PhD program by December 9, 2026, details below.

Optionally, feel free to submit our lab-specific application form alongside your official CSD PhD application. This can be low effort relative to the official application, and this is mainly used to ensure that we don't miss any official applications from students who are particularly interested in G-CLef. Your official application will be reviewed equally regardless of if you submit this lab-specific form.

For equity reasons, we typically cannot meet with prospective PhD students until reviewing all of the application pool. We may reach out in January or February to learn more about your application if needed.

Note that PhD admissions decisions are ultimately made by the CSD department PhD admissions committee, not by Chris or individual G-CLef lab members.

Formally applying to the CMU CSD PhD program

Apply via the main CMU School of Computer Science PhD application by December 9th 2026!

At CMU, the School of Computer Science (SCS) has many departments, one of which is (somewhat confusingly) named the Computer Science Department (CSD). I am affiliated w/ CSD, so make sure to apply to CSD via the "Ph.D. Computer Science" option to ensure your application will be routed properly.

When selecting areas of interest, add either "Artificial Intelligence" or "Machine Learning" as your 1st choice. Also, select "Donahue, Christopher" as a faculty of interest.

Other applicants

For non-PhD applicants (postdoc, CMU masters / undergrad, visitors), please apply using this form. For CMU students, I typically only work with students who have taken and done well in my Intro to Computer Music course (15322 for undergrads, 15622 for grads) or my graduate music AI seminar (15798), though there are occasional exceptions to this.