The Facebook Research Fellowship Program (Fully Funded)

Deadline: October 31, 2017 (5pm PST)

Research Areas

We are accepting applications from students with research related to one of the following areas:

CommAI

We would like to support students who are working on non-incremental approaches to addressing interactive AI. Topics of interest include but are not limited to continual learning, meta-learning, bio-inspired AI, interaction-based learning, ideally pursued with techniques that differ from standard Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning.

Computational Social Science

We would like to support students who are working on advancing research in the social sciences with computational approaches. Topics of interest include but are not limited to algorithmic fairness and bias correction, norms and trust, political participation, information cascades and influence, graph partitioning and community discovery, location aware social networks and mobility, theoretic and practical models and analysis of social networks, computer-mediated communication in dyads and groups, social processes after natural disasters and crises, well-being, social support, and mental health support.

Computer Vision

We would like to support students who are working on advancing the state-of-the-art in computer vision. Topics of interest include but are not limited to image and video recognition (classification, detection, and segmentation), vision and language (visual question answering and visual dialog), visual reasoning (forward prediction, understanding physics, and understanding affordance), large-scale and weakly supervised learning, and understanding humans (pose estimation and action recognition).

Compute Storage and Efficiency

We would like to support students who are working on novel techniques for improving the efficiency of large scale systems such as databases, file systems, caching systems, pub/sub systems. This includes novel exploring techniques to shift computation, memory and storage with the goal of optimizing power consumption and/or cost.

Distributed Systems

We would like to support students working on a broad set of topics related to all kinds of distributed systems, including but not limited to fault tolerance, reliability, system management, scale, performance, efficiency, and security.

Economics and Computation

We would like to support students who are passionate about using mathematical and computational tools from the areas of game theory, optimization, operations management and econometrics. Topics of interest include but are not limited to theoretical and applied research that could help improve the design of mechanisms used to auction ads, optimize network infrastructure usage and processing power, improve processes such as procurement, hiring, and quality control, and understand the underlying processes, behaviors or incentives that align with real world observations.

Natural Language Processing

We would like to support students with topics of interest that include: machine translation, multilingual learning, representation learning, named entity recognition, text classification, semantic parsing, summarization, dialog systems.

Networking and Connectivity

We would like to support students active in the research and development of scalable, fast, reliable, and efficient systems across all areas of networking, including: different wired/wireless network domains such as data centers, backbones, peering, mobile core/backhaul, and access across many different parts of the spectrum (wifi to mmwave to optical); the whole stack, from chip/interface/system hardware design to low-level firmware to distributed systems; and the whole network lifecycle, from planning/design, to provisioning/deployment, to monitoring/troubleshooting/visualization, to control stacks.

Machine Learning

We would like to support students who are working on advancing the state-of-the-art in machine learning. Topics of interest include but are not limited to reinforcement learning, deep learning, causality, non-convex optimization, multi-task learning, curriculum learning, learning embeddings and metrics, speech recognition, cost-sensitive learning, and structured prediction.

Security/Privacy

We would like to support students with established proficiency in the field and passion about solving complex security challenges. Topics of interest include but are not limited to systems, software, and network security, cryptography, mobile malware, IoT security, authentication and authorization, and privacy.

Fellowship Award Includes:

• Tuition and fees will be paid for the academic year (up to two years)
• $37K grant (one-time payment during each academic year)
• Up to $5,000 in conference travel support
• Paid visit to Facebook headquarters to present research
• Opportunity for a paid internship at Facebook

Eligibility Criteria

• Full-time PhD students who are currently involved in on-going research
• Students work must be related to one or more relevant disciplines
• Students must be enrolled during the academic year(s) the Fellowship is awarded
• The Fellowship Program is open to PhD students globally who are enrolled in an accredited university in any country
• First or second year PhD students who are members of a minority group that is underrepresented* in the technology sector have the option of being evaluated for an emerging scholar award.

Applications Must Include

• 1-2 page research summary which clearly identifies the area of focus, importance to the field, and applicability to Facebook of the anticipated research during the award (reference the topical areas below)
• Resume or CV, with email, phone and mailing address, and applicable coursework noted
• 2 letters of recommendation. Please provide reference email addresses, and one reference must be from an academic advisor

NOTE:

*FOR THE PURPOSE OF THE EMERGING SCHOLAR AWARD, “UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITY GROUP” IS CONSIDERED TO INCLUDE PERSONS WHO IDENTIFY AS: BLACK OR AFRICAN AMERICAN, HISPANIC OR LATINO, NATIVE AMERICAN OR ALASKAN NATIVE, NATIVE HAWAIIAN OR PACIFIC ISLANDER.
For Further Enquires:

If you have any questions or inquiries please contact us at [email protected]

Click here for Application Process and Background Information