The Meta Research PhD Fellowship program awards PhD candidates conducting research on the cusp of emerging topics across computer science, engineering, and behavioral science. To support their commitment to furthering research in some of Meta’s key interest areas, Fellows receive full coverage of tuition and university fees for up to two academic years, as well as a $42,000 stipend.

In addition to funding, Fellows are presented with numerous opportunities to engage with Meta researchers, enabling them to gain further insight into industry research and highlight their research. This may include a speaker series, collaborations, and virtual networking events.

Now in its 12th year, the Meta Research PhD Fellowship has supported more than 200 PhD candidates from around the world. This year, we received over 3,200 applications from over 100 universities worldwide and selected 21 outstanding Fellows from 12 universities.

We proudly congratulate this year’s winners, and we thank everyone who took the time to apply and submit a referral.

2023 Meta PhD Fellows

AI System HW SW Co-Design

Mark Zhao
Stanford University

Finalists: Zheng Wang, University of California, Santa Barbara; Colin Unger, Stanford University; Shang Wang, University of Toronto

Applied Statistics

Victoria Lin
Carnegie Mellon University

Finalists: Zhen Lin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Dhruv Narinder Malik, Carnegie Mellon University; Tongzhou Wang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rohan Taori, Stanford University

AR/VR Battery Research

Alexius Lyle Wadell
Carnegie Mellon University

Finalists: Muhammad Aadil Khan, Stanford University; Reid Andrew Dressler, Dalhousie University; Nag Young Kim, Yonsei University; Divya Rathore, Dalhousie University

AR/VR Computer Graphics

Finalists: Mikaela Angelina Uy, Stanford University; Benjamin Attal, Carnegie Mellon University; Zhaoxi Chen, Nanyang Technological University; Daniel Severo, University of Toronto; Edward Lu, Carnegie Mellon University

AR/VR Future Technologies

Erica Principe Cruz
Carnegie Mellon University

Finalists: Breigha Adeyemo, University of Illinois Chicago; Savannah Halow, University of Nevada, Reno; Zhaoyuan Su (Nick), University of California, Irvine; Julie Michelle Abdinoor, Purdue University

AR/VR Human Understanding

Finalists: Hong-Xing “Koven” Yu, Stanford University; Omid Taheri, University of Tübingen; Yifeng Jiang, Stanford University; Songwei Ge, University of Maryland, College Park

AR/VR Human-Computer Interaction

Finalists: Junxiao Shen, University of Cambridge; Anandghan Waghmare, University of Washington; Yiyue Luo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

AR/VR Photonics and Optics

Siddharth Doshi
Stanford University

Finalists: Ogulcan Emre Orsel, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Ruiming Cao, University of California, Berkeley

AR/VR Wireless

Shuaifeng Jiang
Arizona State University

Finalists: Tara Boroushaki, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Chenning Li, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Qihang Zeng, National University of Singapore; Hao Luo, Arizona State University

Audio Presence

Samuel Clarke
Stanford University

Finalists: Tobias Daniel Kabzinski, RWTH Aachen University; Shoken Eckhart Kaneko, University of Maryland, College Park; Andrea Cicero, University of Salford; Wusheng Liang, Carnegie Mellon University

Augmented Reality Audio

Dawei Liang
University of Texas at Austin

Finalists: Jane Brown, University of Memphis; Dennis Fedorishin, University at Buffalo; Yanru Jiang, University of California, Los Angeles

Computational Social Sciences

Hans William Alexander Hanley
Stanford University

Finalists: Benjamin Laufer, Cornell Tech; Peizhao Li, Brandeis University; Kushal Chawla, University of Southern California; Lucy Li, University of California, Berkeley

Economics and Computation

Argyris Oikonomou
Yale University

Finalists: Zhexiao Lin, University of California, Berkeley; Xizhi Tan, Drexel University; Kunhe Yang, University of California, Berkeley; Amilcar Enrique Velez Salamanca, Northwestern University

Human Computer Interaction - Social Media, People, and Society

Finalists: Busra Tanriverdi Ozkan, Temple University; Duyen Phuong Tran, Columbia University; Daniel Nkemelu, Georgia Institute of Technology

Privacy and Data Practices

Jane Im
University of Michigan

Finalists: Shiza Ali, Boston University; Sushmita Laila Khan, Clemson University; Zainab Agha, Vanderbilt University

Security and Privacy

Xuechen Li
Stanford University

Finalists: Wei-Ning Chen, Stanford University; Armin Namavari, Cornell University; Kewen Wu, University of California, Berkeley; Lucy Qin, Brown University

Technology Policy Research

Caitlin Cary Burke
Stanford University

Finalists: Alison Feder Cooper, Cornell University; Breigha Adeyemo, University of Illinois Chicago; Pariroo Ratta, Harvard University; Shira Zilberstein, Harvard University