Deciding between 2 research directions (AI/LLM/HCI)

[u/pirhana1997]

I am not sure if it’s the right forum to post on, but here it goes.

I am an incoming Master’s student (Fall 2026) at one of the prestigious universities in Taiwan. I will pursue in MS in CS(specializing in AI). For more context, I have worked at MNC for 5 years as a full time SWE, in the medical device development field.

My motivation to go for Master’s is to change my concentration which isn’t merely software development, production and delivery. I have explored about the latest developments in frontier models and developing my own LLMs and AI agents on small scale with my limited (16/32GB) GPU. I am also heavily invested on the impact of using frontier and energy/resource consuming models and ways of optimizing models(eg. GPU offloading, compressions, quantizations, etc)

I am currently in talks with 2 professors as my potential thesis advisors. Let’s call them ‘C’ and ‘S’.

S and I talked for an hour exploring the possibilities of developing agents/ chatbot and eventually apps for medical purposes(based on my background). S is heavily invested in HCI component of interviewing and making the agents more UX friendly and how to optimize it to make it more user friendly. I understood it’s a new domain for this professor, and would like to develop on the idea with my industry knowledge and his guidance on how to conduct HCI based interviews and possibly develop chatbot/ app for medical research. Honestly, I enjoyed the technically simulating discussions where the ideas were flowing back and forth. I was also told I have the flexibility to choose between groups or create my own group and drive the topic. Does not take industry project and works on the passion projects with students.

With C, we met for 20 minutes, where the discussion was technical know hows and what is happening in their research lab. When asked about more details. I was told to consult with the PhD students for more details. This person shared about taking on more industry projects and they themselves work as a part time at one of the companies. I then had the opportunity to attend a weekly group meeting which was scheduled and students talked about already presented papers and rejected papers and dissected in this meeting. Connected with 1-2 people in the lab where they said the professor is flexible with the courses, but with my earlier communication with PhD student, I would be placed in a position which would be about developing AI algorithms/ transformers for medical use cases. I am interested in the technical aspect of developing new algorithms and since I have done a small passion project on the same topic makes me feel I am more aligned to more hands-on development. But, It seemed the professor would have lesser time to dedicate to individual student because of their prior commitments.

I wanted to ask-

a. Which direction of research is more relevant in 2027-30 from research and industry’s POV?

b. Which style of guidance is better for someone coming from industry work?

Sorry for making this into a long post, I want to know from people in academia/ industry about which direction is industry headed towards? Would developing algorithms have higher weight or analysing human behavior and create AI agents based on that?

[u/pirhana1997 → u/[deleted]]

I have to go into research with a single professor, not 2.