It is a pleasure to announce that Ph.D. student Jieyu Zhao has been named a 2020 Microsoft Research PhD Fellow. Jieyu was one of 15 Lovelace and PhD Fellows selected from among 600 gifted researchers from top institutions across the U.S. More details can be found at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/2020-ada-lovelace-and-phd-fellowships-help-recipients-achieve-broad-research-and-educational-goals/
Of the 10 PhD Fellowships, Jieyu is the only one whose photo is on the page. She must have stood out even among all of these exceptional recipients. Her research examines various potential stereotypes exhibited in machine learning models and seeks to develop computational approaches to enhance fairness in a wide range of NLP applications. (You can read more about this on the blog at the link above.) The fellowship will cover Jieyu’s tuition, fees, and living expenses for two academic years, provide a conference and travel allowance, and offer a paid research internship during the summer.
Our congratulations to Jieyu and to her advisor, Kai-Wei Chang. The last, and only other, UCLA winner was Saswat Padhi in 2017. We look forward to more UCLA PhD students being recognized in the future.