Announcing the recipients of the 2022 Meta PhD Research Fellowship
By: Meta Research
The Meta PhD Research Fellowship program awards PhD candidates conducting cutting-edge research in emerging topics across computer science and engineering, including AI system hardware/software co-design, blockchain and cryptoeconomics, human-computer interaction, programming languages, and AR/VR future technologies.
To support students’ commitment to furthering research in some of Meta’s key interest areas, the program offers full coverage of students’ tuition and university fees for up to two academic years, as well as a $42,000 stipend.
Fellows are also invited to attend the annual Meta PhD Fellowship Summit, where they’ll have the opportunity to present their own research, discover more about the impact of current research at Meta, and build connections with Meta researchers and fellow award winners. As in 2021, this year’s summit will be held virtually.
Now in its 11th year, the Meta PhD Research Fellowship has supported more than 179 PhD candidates from around the world. This year, we received over 2,300 applications from over 100 universities worldwide, and we selected 37 outstanding Fellows from 24 universities.
Having reviewed one of the most diverse and competitive pools of candidates to date, we proudly congratulate this year’s winners, and we thank everyone who took the time to submit an application.
2022 Meta PhD Fellows
AI System HW SW Co-Design
Finalists: Saeed Rashidi, Georgia Institute of Technology; Yiltan Hasan Temucin, Queen's University; Anish Acharya, UT Austin; Fan Lai, University of Michigan; Xiangning Chen, UCLA; Jian Weng, UCLA
Applied Statistics
Finalists: Yi Ding Jiang, Carnegie Mellon University; Tolga Ergen, Stanford University; Ayush Sekhari, Cornell University; Nataly Brukhim, Princeton University
AR/VR Computer Graphics
Finalists: Zekun Hao, Cornell University; Sai Praveen Bangaru, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Qianqian Wang, Cornell University; Mianlun Zheng, University of Southern California; Shinyoung Yi, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
AR/VR Future Technologies
Finalists: Laura Boffi, Università di Ferrara; Matthew Gottsacker; University of Central Florida
AR/VR Human Computer Interaction
Finalists: Paul Streli, ETH Zurich; Niall Williams, University of Maryland College Park; Zane Anthony Zook, Rice University; Karan Ahuja, Carnegie Mellon University; Wen-Jie Tseng, Télécom Paris – Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ryan Louie, Northwestern University
AR/VR Human Understanding
Lucy Chai
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Julian Chibane
Max Planck Institute for Informatics/University of Tubingen
Finalists: Patrick Lin Grady, Georgia Institute of Technology; Yu-Ying Yeh, UC San Diego; Cho-Ying Wu, University of Southern California; Hsin-Ping Huang, UC Merced
AR/VR Perception, Cognition, and Action
Karolina Krzys
Queen's University
Finalists: Sara Khorasani, University of Melbourne; John Veillette, University of Chicago
AR/VR Photonics and Optics
Christina Maria Spaegele
Harvard University
Finalists: Mahsa Torfeh, University of Southern California; Kevin Chew Figueroa, University of Arizona
Audio Presence
Armisha Roberts
University of Florida
Finalists: Jonah Casebeer, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Shoken Kaneko, University of Maryland College Park; Marta Gospodarek, New York University
Augmented Reality Audio
Pranay Manocha
Princeton University
Finalists: Cong Han, Columbia University; Ankit Parag Shah, Carnegie Mellon University; Ranya Aloufi, Imperial College London; Kun Sun, University of Washington
Blockchain and Cryptoeconomics
Neil Giridharan
UC Berkeley
Finalists: Ertem Nusret Tas, Stanford University; Sourav Das, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Tiancheng Xie, UC Berkeley; Shir Cohen, Technion; Kaihua Qin, Imperial College London; Kushal Babel, Cornell University
Computational Social Science
Serina Chang
Stanford University
Finalists: Julia Medelsohn, University of Michigan; Isaac Paul Waller, University of Toronto; Drew Johnston, Harvard University; Simiao Zuo, Georgia Institute of Technology; Cazamere Comrie, Cornell University; Noah Corinthian Jones, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Database Systems
Finalists: Kapil Vaidya, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Saehan Jo, Cornell University; Peng Li, Georgia Institute of Technology; Amine Mhedhbi, University of Waterloo
Distributed Systems
Jing Liu
University of Wisconsin
Finalists: Midhul Vuppalapati, Cornell University; Md Hasan Al Maruf, University of Michigan; Ankit Bhardwaj, University of Utah
Economics and Computation
Finalists: Amilcar Enrique Velez Salamanca, Northwestern University; Achraf Bahamou, Columbia University; Marina Knittel, University of Maryland College Park; Roberto-Rafael Maura-Rivero, London School of Economics and Political Science; Antonia Miruna Oprescu, Cornell University; Michela Meister, Cornell University
Human Computer Interaction - Social Media, People, and Society
Finalists: Lauren Gilbert, UC San Diego; Farhana Shahid, Cornell University; Muhammad Masood, City University of Hong Kong; Jimmy Narang, UC Berkeley; Kevin Marc Blasiak, University of Queensland; Samuel Olaniran, University of the Witwatersrand
Networking
Finalists: Weiyang Wang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Yang Zhou, Harvard University; Jingqi Huang, Purdue University; Jiarong Xing, Rice University
Privacy and Data Use
Kaiwen Sun
University of Michigan
Finalists: Jane Im, University of Michigan; Zainab Agha, University of Central Florida
Programming Languages
Iacovos G. Kolokasis
University of Crete
Finalists: Paulette Koronkevich, University of British Columbia; Cheng Zhang, Boston University; Đorđe Žikelić, Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Security and Privacy
Finalists: Harjasleen Malvai, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Tabitha Ogilvie, Royal Holloway University of London; Ariana Mirian, UC San Diego; Jonathan Takeshita, University of Notre Dame; Alexander Jacob Levine, University of Maryland College Park; Pratik Sarkar, Boston University
Technology Policy Research
Finalist: Emma Wittenberg Lurie, UC Berkeley
