Google PhD Fellowship Program

Overview

The Google PhD Fellowship Program directly supports outstanding PhD students in areas relevant to computer science and related fields. The program aims to recognize and nurture promising young academics who can influence the future of technology.

Research Areas

• Computer Architecture

  Focuses on foundational research in computer science, including processor design and AI's impact on circuit design. Proposals in all areas of computer architecture are encouraged.

• Algorithms and Optimization

  Addresses complex contemporary problems through efficient methods and resource efficiency. Proposals in combinatorial optimization, market algorithms, operations research, continuous optimization, and learning are sought.

• Health Research

  Seeks proposals for generating and understanding large datasets to improve population health, especially in under-resourced regions or communities. Novel methods for extracting health insights are also encouraged.

• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

  Supports research advancing innovative, human-centered interactive systems, particularly in foundational principles, guidelines, and theories shaping the future of HCI in the era of generative AI.

• Machine Learning and ML Foundations

  Includes fundamental theoretical investigations into algorithms and their underlying principles, as well as practical applications addressing real-world challenges. Proposals in learning algorithms, learning theory, federated learning, information theory, optimization for ML algorithms, reinforcement learning, robotics, and recommender systems are welcomed.

• Machine Perception

  Researchers tackle tasks such as action recognition, object recognition and detection, hand-writing recognition, audio understanding, perceptual similarity measures, and image and video compression. Generative methods for creating exciting and novel images and videos are a main focus.

• Natural Language Processing (NLP)

  Advances the state of the art in natural language technologies and accelerates adoption for the benefit of the user. Proposals on knowledge retrieval, grounding, factuality, agentic workflows, translation, multilinguality, multimodality, evaluation, and novel applications of LLMs are encouraged.

• Privacy, Safety, and Security

  Supports and partners with academia to bring about state-of-the-art advancements across privacy, security, and safety areas. Proposals on novel applications of AI for privacy, security, and safety, ensuring privacy, security, and safety of AI systems, applied cryptography, differential privacy, hardware security, and software vulnerabilities are welcomed.

• Quantum Computing

  Develops a fault-tolerant quantum computer capable of handling commercial, quantum-advantaged workloads and identifies novel applications for quantum hardware. Proposals on quantum algorithms, quantum error correction, early fault-tolerant quantum computing, NISQ experiments, and superconducting qubits are encouraged.

• Software Engineering and Programming Languages

  Researches all aspects of software, including software engineering and programming languages, software development methodologies and tools, debugging practices and tools, software testing strategies and tools, cooperation strategies for developers, interface and library design, programming language implementation, code optimization and verification techniques, etc.

• Systems, Networking, and Cloud Computing

  Exploration of future software and hardware for global distributed systems at unprecedented scale, ranging from firmware to operating system kernels, global storage, ML execution environments, cloud-scale orchestration, novel networking hardware, communications protocols, network management, custom processors, custom HW accelerators, and their systems infrastructure.

Review Criteria

Applications are evaluated on the strength of the research proposal, research impact, student academic achievements, and leadership potential. Research proposals are evaluated for innovative concepts relevant to Google’s research areas, robustness, and potential impact to the field. Essay responses may be considered in addition to application materials for applicants in Canada and the United States, East Asia, and Latin America.

FAQs

What does the Google PhD Fellowship include?

• Africa: Up to 3-year Fellowship, US $15K for stipend and other research-related activities, travel expenses including overseas travel.
• Australia and New Zealand: 1-year Fellowship, AUD $20K for stipend and other research-related activities, travel expenses including overseas travel.
• Canada and the United States: Up to 2-year Fellowship, US $85K per year towards education costs (tuition and fees), living expenses, travel, and personal equipment.