Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science
photos of the CIS students awarded PhD fellowships

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CIS Students Nab Two of 10 Elite Microsoft PhD Fellowships

Two Cornell Computing and Information Science graduate students are among the 10 elite students selected for the 2018-2019 Microsoft PhD Fellowship Program. “These are incredibly talented students, the top students from across North America,” said Bill Dolan, research manager at Microsoft’s Research Lab.

The program provides 100 percent of tuition and fees for two consecutive academic years and an annual stipend of $32,000. Since its inception, the program has supported 22 fellows, many of who have gone on to perform pioneering research in the technology industry.

The two Cornell CIS students are:

Manish Raghavan, PhD, computer science

Machine learning algorithms are increasingly being used in socially consequential contexts, and numerous concerns have been raised with regard to the potential adverse impacts on disadvantaged populations. Manish’s research seeks to understand and develop techniques to mitigate such effects. This involves analyzing mechanisms that address particular societal biases as well as identifying fundamental trade-offs that exist between desirable properties of algorithmic systems.

Justine Zhang, PhD, information science

Justine’s research aims to develop models of conversations that explicitly encode the complex interactional dynamics they entail and are applicable to the diversity and scale of large online social systems.