Seven College of Computing graduate students have been selected for premier computing fellowships from such top companies as Microsoft and Google. 

Ph.D. students Amir Yazdan Baksh, Caitlyn Seim, Sadra Yazdanbod, Alexander Clegg, April Simmons, Matthew Fahrbach, Samantha Petti, and Ari Schlesinger  all received fellowships from prominent companies and organizations for their innovative research and emerging expertise. 

Yazda Baksh, a second year Ph.D. student in CS, was awarded a Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship.

“These achievements show off the quality of Georgia Tech’s students,” says Assistant Professor Hadi Esmaeilzadeh, faculty advisor to Yazda-Baksh. “I am extremely proud of Amir [Yazda Baksh] and excited to see how this propels his future research.”

As reported previously in Interface, Yazdanbod, a third-year doctoral student at the School of Computer Science advised by Vijay Vazirani, was selected for Google's Ph.D. fellowship program in mid-March.

Fahrbach, a first-year Ph.D. student in the School of Computer Science’s Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization (ACO) program, rounds out the School of Computer Science students with fellowships. An advisee of Professor Dana Randall, Fahrbach received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship for his research on Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms.

Petti, a fellow Ph.D. ACO student, also received a NSF fellowship. Though based in the School of Mathematics, she’s advised by Professor Santosh Vempala in SCS.

Seim, Simmons, Clegg, and Schlesinger are Ph.D. students in the School of Interactive Computing that earned fellowships. Seim, a third-year doctoral student advised by Professor Thad Starner, received a Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship for her research in wearable devices for rehabilitation and learning new tasks without active participation. With Yazdan Baksh , the two are Georgia Tech’s first Microsoft Research Fellows in nearly five years.

“I was ecstatic,” Seim said about winning the fellowship. “This support is invaluable, and the connection with Microsoft Research is something that benefits my current research and my future career.”

Simmons, Clegg, and Schlesinger all earned NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. They are advised respectively by GVU Director Keith Edwards; Professor Greg Turk and Associate Professor Karen Liu; Professor Beki Grinter and GVU Director Keith Edwards.

Each fellowship provides monetary support to its recipient in his or her continued research and education. For additional information, refer to the links provided.