Microsoft Research recognizes these outstanding graduate students, who represent a selection of the best and the brightest in their fields.
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2013 Graduate Women Scholars
Danqi Chen
Stanford University
Research area interest: machine learning, data mining
Long-term research goal: I would like to aim my future research in the field of machine learning and its applications to a range of domains including language processing, information retrieval, and social networks.
Meghan Clark
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Research area interest: embedded systems, ubiquitous computing, security
Long-term research goal: I would like to explore the potential for embedded systems to enable major advancements in quality of life and environmental interactions. In particular, I see opportunities for impact in remote health and science in developing regions, responsive and energy-efficient buildings, and networks that are quick and cheap to deploy in areas with limited Internet connectivity. Additionally, as sensor-based applications become more and more integrated with our lives, I would like to investigate ways of providing useful sensor-based services while preserving privacy.
Lilian de Greef
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington, Seattle
Research area interest: ubiquitous computing
Long-term research goal: I want to work at the intersection of multiple disciplines to develop technologies that beneficially impact people's lives. For example, I am currently working with computer vision, human-computer interaction (HCI), machine learning, and medicine to use smartphones to detect dangerous levels of jaundice, or yellowing of the skin, in newborns.
Dongjing He
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Jennifer Iglesias
Mathematics
Carnegie Mellon University
Research area interest: algorithms, combinatorics, and optimization
Long-term research goal: I would like to continue working in areas relating to graph theory and algorithms, in particular, I would like to improve on current approximation algorithms for NP-Hard problems.
Natasha Jaques
Computer Science Department
University of British Columbia
Research area interest: artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, machine learning
Long-term research goal: For a truly advanced artificial intelligence to interact with a human, it must be able to perceive information from the many implicit communication channels used in everyday conversation. I would like to make use of methods for reasoning in the face of uncertainty, as well as machine learning, to build an emotionally perceptive artificial intelligence that can interact in a manner similar to a human. I believe this could have many beneficial applications, from Intelligent Tutoring Systems, to assistive technologies, to helping individuals suffering from autism spectrum disorders.
Radhika Mittal
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley
Research area interest: computer networks, machine learning
Long-term research goal: I am interested in Internet research. What excites me about this research area is that the Internet was developed in a rather ad-hoc manner, where people kept iterating over existing solutions as demands changed. Now, with ever-increasing traffic and evolving technologies, there is a tremendous scope of improvement and I would like to make a significant contribution to it.
Parisa Khanipour Roshan
Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Research area interest: online communities, social support, social change
Long-term research goal: I am interested in studying how we can use online tools to support disconnected individuals who are part of the same community, whether it is a pre-existing community, like the survivors of abuse, or an emerging one, such as social media spontaneous volunteers during a crisis.
Morgan Vigil
Computer Science
University of California, Santa Barbara
Research area interest: wireless networks, information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D)
Long-term research goal: I want to develop holistic connectivity solutions for under-resourced communities with limited connections to the Internet. My chief goal is to develop wireless networks that promote information contribution and production in addition to information consumption. In particular, I am interested in making last mile connections as effective as possible for knowledge sharing and educational purposes.
Jing Wang
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Northwestern University
Research area interest: perceptually based image processing
Long-term research goal: I plan to work on image analysis techniques based on models of human perception. The human visual system is amazingly good at analyzing images and extracting useful information, and thus provides inspiration, feasibility clues, and performance goals. In particular, I am interested in developing statistical techniques for visual texture analysis and the extraction of material properties.
Support via the Graduate Women Scholarship will allow me to devote all my time to my research at what I expect to be a critical point in my graduate career. The scholarship support for attending academic conferences will also contribute to advancing my academic development by enabling me to learn about cutting-edge techniques in my field.
2012 Graduate Women Scholars
Danielle Bragg
Computer Science Department
Princeton University
Research area interest: human-computer interaction
Long-term research goal: I am particularly interested in interactive systems involving music and machine learning. I aim to develop systems that improve people's lives in meaningful ways.
Elizabeth Murnane
Information Science Department
Cornell University
Research area interest: human-computer interaction
Long-term research goal: I want to help people remember, find, understand, and create information via personalized and adaptive interfaces. My principle goal is to study how systems can be made more aware of a user's attributes, task context, and social connections in order to generate and refine long-term semantic models about an individual's abilities, interests, and intentions that can be applied to intelligent systems. I am particularly interested in applications in the domains of recommender systems and example-centric problem solving.
Emily Leven
Mathematics Department
University of California, San Diego
Research area interest: algebraic dombinatorics
Long-term research goal: I would like to build bridges between algebra and combinatorics by making use of results in both fields to solve questions in areas of common interest, such as in the theory of symmetric functions.
Jennifer Townsend
Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization (Mathematics)
Georgia Institute of Technology
Research area interest: theory and complexity applications in social choice/preference theory
Long-term research goal: I want to aim my research towards a field where I can do more computation work while simultaneously studying fascinating theoretical mathematical puzzles. I'd love to end up working in preference prediction and network theory.
Joanna Drummond
Computer Science Department
University of Toronto
Research area interest: decision making under uncertainty, computational economics
Long-term research goal: My overall research goal is to develop models and algorithms that allow people and organizations to make optimal decisions with partial information (for example, uncertainty about the environment or incomplete preference information) in real-world settings. I am particularly interested in bringing together insights from economics, machine learning, and algorithm design to solve these types of problems.
Kaitlin Speer
Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics Department
Northwestern University
Research area interest: mathematical biology, climate modeling
Long-term research goal: I hope to apply analytical and computational methods to analyzing models concerning the Earth's cryosphere, in particular, the effects of the varied reflectivity of the ice and water. In doing so, as well as in further research, I hope to shed light on the mathematical and physical properties of tipping points present in many complex systems.
Valkyrie Savage
Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley
Research area interest: human-computer interaction
Long-term research goal: I am hoping to explore 3-D printing and how it can be made more accessible and useful: for example, through the design of printable electronics and re-imagining of user interfaces for 3-D modeling. That manufacturing and design knowledge gain a new foothold among hobbyists and youth is critically important for keeping jobs in the country and encouraging personal learning and growth.
Vanessa Sochat
Biomedical Informatics Program
Stanford University
Research area interest: using machine learning and computational methods for neuroimaging analysis
Long-term research goal: I aspire to work on data-driven methods that combine multi-modal neuroimaging data to provide insight to the structure and function of the human brain. My long-term goal is to develop infrastructure to allow for semantic accessibility of imaging data, and tools that might be utilized to identify biomarkers of neurological disease.
Veronica Catete
Computer Science Department
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Research area interest: educational video games, games for learning
Long-term research goal: I hope to develop polished and engaging video games that facilitate learning. I have a particular interest in developing games that teach programming and other creative problem solving skills to middle school students in order to increase interest in computer science among underrepresented groups with hopes of strengthening the computer science and STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] pipeline. I also want to see my current middle school programs expanded to the high school level via an AP Computer Science course that we are developing at UNC Charlotte. I think it would be cool to see my work/research being used in real classrooms, helping the teachers make learning fun.
Yubin Kim
Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Research area interest: information retrieval
Long-term research goal: I would like contribute to a better search experience for users everywhere by developing better search techniques suited for different domains, such as microblogs, and exploring novel ways to present the results of a search.
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.
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
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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