Microsoft Research recognizes these outstanding graduate students, who represent a selection of the best and the brightest in their fields.

2012 Scholarship Recipients

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• 2011 Graduate Women Scholars
• 2010 Graduate Women Scholars
• 2009 Graduate Women Scholars

2011 Graduate Women Scholars

Lacey Best-Rowden
Computer Science Department
Michigan State University

Research Area Interest: Algorithms and Networking

Long-term Research Goal: I would like to aim my future research towards discovering solutions to challenging problems that are important to society and about which I am passionate. I also see myself contributing to computer science education research, particularly with regards to new and better methods for integrating computer science into core curriculum for high school students.

Vivienne Groves
Economics Department
Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Research Area Interest: Market Design

Long-term Research Goal: I hope to use tools in stochastic process and operations research to develop models in efficient market design. In particular, I am interested in how theoretical models in microeconomics can be used to explain human behavior, help solve social welfare problems, improve political institutions, and design more efficient methods for raising government revenue.

Tingting Jiang
Computer Science Department
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Research Area Interest: Cyber Security, Network Anomaly Detection, and Forensics

Long-term Research Goal: The goal of my research is to develop a novel security framework for networked computers that provides robust defense against malware attacks and is difficult for malware to circumvent. Specifically, my research will focus on modeling and characterization of human-user behaviors, developing protocols for fine-grained traffic-input analysis, and preventing forgeries and attacks by malware.

Farah Juma
Computer Science Department
University of Toronto

Research Area Interest: Artificial Intelligence—Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

Long-term Research Goal: My long-term objective is to pursue a career in research in the field of artificial intelligence, where my research can be applied to challenging real-world problems. I find artificial intelligence to be an exciting field because of its interdisciplinary nature. Application areas where I would like to have an impact include electronic commerce and medicine. I am especially inspired by collaboration between researchers in the field of artificial intelligence and the field of computational biology that aims to tackle problems that profoundly affect people’s lives.

Ann Lee
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research Area Interest: Speech and Natural Language Processing

Long-term Research Goal: I would like to dedicate my work to improving machines’ abilities in understanding humans. Making machines easier to communicate with and behave more like humans are my research goals.

Mengmeng Li
Computer Science Department
University of Pittsburgh

Research Area Interest: Computer/Information Security

Long-term Research Goal: I would like to pursue research in the IT field, and contribute to the development of communication security.

Jamie Morgenstern
Computer Science Department
Carnegie Mellon University

Research Area Interest: Game Theory and Logic

Long-term Research Goal: I hope to use techniques from logic and programming languages to develop general frameworks in which to describe and prove properties of games and mechanisms.

Justine Sherry
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley

Research Area Interest: Computer Networks

Long-term Research Goal: I have a broad interest in networking, specifically in inter-domain, wide area settings. I am particularly excited about Internet measurement, network architecture, and network security.

Kateryna Kuksenok
Computer Science and Engineering Department
University of Washington, Seattle

Research Area Interest: Human-Computer Interaction; Natural Language Processing

Long-term Research Goal: I am interested in studying how Human Computer Interaction techniques can improve Natural Language Processing applications. In the domain of machine translation, for example, NLP algorithms can be very effective at translating literal meanings, but struggle with interpreting cultural cues that are embedded in text. Feedback from end-user communities with appropriate domain knowledge can augment the results of machine translation in such situations. By exploring visualization techniques and support for active learning in NLP applications, I hope to find novel ways of enabling people to engage with information.

Sonal Verma
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Research Area Interest: Wireless, Embedded, and Networked Systems

Long-term Research Goal: At the University of Michigan, our team is working to create an ecosystem of phone-centric, square-inch footprint sensors that will be useful in both mobile health care and as reference designs for a broader community. We aim to demonstrate the possibility of parasitically powering external peripherals and transferring data to and from a mobile device, such as a Windows smartphone using only its audio headset port. This work will marry low-power sensing with the mobile phone’s computation, communications, and display technologies focused on transforming mobile phones into leading-edge data collection devices. We hope that our effort will make headway for the integration of other sensing peripherals for monitoring blood pressure, blood glucose, and body temperature with the mobile phone. It may be a small but important step towards enabling mobile healthcare technology for delivering accurate medical information anytime anywhere.

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2010 Graduate Women Scholars

Adriana Lopez
New York University

Ailar Javadi
Georgia Institute of Technology

Ariel Levavi
University of California, San Diego

Arthi Ramachandran
Columbia University

Azalia Mirhoseini
Rice University

Betelhem Mateos Mekisso
Oklahoma State University

Eleanor O'Rourke
University of Washington, Seattle

Gabriela Marcu
Carnegie Mellon University

Jinyan Guan
University of Arizona

Olga Turanova
University of Chicago

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2009 Graduate Women's Scholarship Recipients

Xide Lin
University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign

Laura Grupp
University of California – San Diego

America Holloway
University of California – Irvine

Jing-Jing Liu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jin Joo Lee
Georgia Institute of Technology

Dafna Shahaf
Carnegie Mellon University

Michaela Goetz
Cornell University

Tamara Denning
University of Washington

Meromit Singer
University of California – Berkeley

Katrina Panovich
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Related Links

• Graduate Women's Scholarship Program
• Fellowship Programs Worldwide
• Asia-Pacific Program
• Europe Programs
• India Program
• Latin America Program
• North America Programs 

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