Google Faculty Research Awards: Summer 2015

posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

We have just completed another round of the Google Faculty Research Awards, our annual open call for research proposals on Computer Science and related topics, including systems, machine learning, software engineering, security and mobile. Our grants cover tuition for a graduate student and provide both faculty and students the opportunity to work directly with Google researchers and engineers.

This round we received 805 proposals, about the same as last round, covering 48 countries on 6 continents. After expert reviews and committee discussions, we decided to fund 113 projects, with 27% of the funding awarded to universities outside the U.S. The subject areas that received the highest level of support were systems, machine perception, software engineering, and machine learning.

The Faculty Research Awards program plays a critical role in building and maintaining strong collaborations with top research faculty globally. These relationships allow us to keep a pulse on what’s happening in academia in strategic areas, and they help to extend our research capabilities and programs. Faculty also report, through our annual survey, that they and their students benefit from a direct connection to Google as a source of ideas and perspective.

Congratulations to the well-deserving recipients of this round’s awards. If you are interested in applying for the next round (deadline is October 15), please visit our website for more information.

Google Faculty Research Awards: Winter 2015

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

We have just completed another round of the Google Faculty Research Awards, our biannual open call for research proposals on Computer Science and related topics, including systems, machine perception, structured data, robotics, and mobile. Our grants cover tuition for a graduate student and provide both faculty and students the opportunity to work directly with Google researchers and engineers.

This round we received 808 proposals, an increase of 12% over last round, covering 55 countries on 6 continents. After expert reviews and committee discussions, we decided to fund 122 projects, with 20% of the funding awarded to universities outside the U.S. The subject areas that received the highest level of support were systems, human-computer interaction, and machine perception.

The Faculty Research Award program enables us to build strong relationships with faculty around the world who are pursuing innovative research, and plays an important role for Google’s Research organization by fostering an exchange of ideas that advances the state of the art. Each round, we receive proposals from faculty who may be just starting their careers, or who might be experimenting in new areas that help us look forward and innovate on what's emerging in the CS community.

Congratulations to the well-deserving recipients of this round’s awards. If you are interested in applying for the next round (deadline is April 15), please visit our website for more information.

Google Research Awards: Summer 2014

posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations

We have just completed another round of the Google Research Awards, our biannual open call for proposals on computer science-related topics including systems, machine perception, structured data, robotics, and mobile. Our grants cover tuition for a graduate student and provide both faculty and students the opportunity to work directly with Google researchers and engineers.

This round we received 722 proposals, an increase of 5% over last round, covering 44 countries on 6 continents. After expert reviews and committee discussions, we decided to fund 110 projects. The subject areas that received the highest level of support were systems, human-computer interaction, mobile, and machine perception, with 22% of the funding awarded to universities outside the U.S.

We introduced three new topics this round, representing important new research areas for Google. Computational neuroscience looks at the information processing properties of the brain and nervous system. One funded proposal will study scene recognition in this context. A second new area is physical interactions with devices. With the introduction of new paradigms such as Google Glass, we can study how such devices expand our processing capabilities. The third new area is online learning at scale, which covers topics such as teacher-student interaction at scale, data-driven adaptive learning, and innovative assessment methods.

Congratulations to the well-deserving recipients of this round’s awards. If you are interested in applying for the next round (deadline is October 15), please visit our website for more information.