11 Graduate Students Selected for Prestigious Fellowships

The diverse cohort come from the various groups within the department. They are a mix of those new to Columbia and students who have received fellowships for the year. 

J.P. Morgan 2019 AI Research PhD Fellowship Awards
The inaugural award supports researchers who have the skills and imagination to potentially transform the way we live and work.

Ana-Andreaa Stoica
A third-year PhD student, Ana-Andreaa Stoica works with Augustin Chaintreau on social networks and algorithmic fairness. Her work focuses on mathematical models, data analysis, and policy implications for algorithm design in social networks. Stoica graduated from Princeton in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and certificates in Computing and Applied Mathematics.

2019 Google PhD Fellowship in Algorithms, Optimizations, and Markets
The program recognizes outstanding graduate students doing exceptional work in computer science and related research areas.

Peilin Zhong
A member of the Theory Group, Peilin Zhong is a third-year PhD student who is particularly interested in parallel graph algorithms, generative models, and large-scale data computational models. His goal is to design new algorithms for large-scale computational models that have more impact in machine learning, data mining, and can be used in practice. Zhong was part of the Yao Class at Tsinghua University and graduated in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering.

National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship
The NDSEG is a highly competitive, portable fellowship that is awarded to U.S. citizens and nationals who intend to pursue a doctoral degree in one of fifteen supported disciplines.

Gabriel Ryan
Gabriel Ryan is a second-year PhD student whose current research involves using deep learning to construct logical formulas for program verification and synthesis. Prior to joining Columbia for graduate studies, he worked as a software engineer developing systems for data security, robotic 3D mapping and localization, and ballistic missile defense. Ryan graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.S. Engineering and B.A. Computer Science dual degree in 2013.

Ministry of Education of Taiwan – Government Scholarship to Study Abroad
The scholarship is awarded to Taiwanese students studying abroad with exceptional academic record and potential in their research areas.

Jen-Shuo Liu
Working in professor Steven Feiner’s Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Laboratory, third-year PhD student Jen-Shuo Liu’s research focus is user interface design for augmented reality and virtual reality. Liu has gained recognition for his work including an NYC Media Lab award for an augmented reality project. He graduated from National Taiwan University with an M.S. degree in Communication Engineering in 2016 .

The Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF)
The BAEF fosters the higher education of deserving Belgians and Americans through its exchange fellowship program.

Basile Van Hoorick
As an MS student, Basile Van Hoorick’s interests include computer vision, machine learning, and software engineering. While at Columbia, he hopes to work as a research and/or teaching assistant. Van Hoorick was a finalist in the Flemish Mathematics Olympiad (a national mathematics competition) in 2014 and studied electrical engineering at Ghent University in Belgium where he graduated summa cum laude in July 2019.

SEAS Fellowships
Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences established the Presidential and SEAS fellowships to recruit outstanding students from around the world to pursue graduate studies at the school.

Xi Chen
As part of her research project, Xi Chen is trying to predict depression based on human mobility trajectory. Her interests lie in social networks and machine learning and she is a second-year PhD student working with Augustin Chaintreau. Chen graduated in 2018 with a degree in computer science and mathematics from Carleton College.

Shunhua Jiang
Shunhua Jiang is a first-year PhD student with the Theory Group, under the guidance of Omri Weinstein and Alex Andoni. Her research interests range from data structures, lower bounds, to algorithms. An alum of Tsinghua University, Jiang graduated in 2015 with a degree in computer science.

Eric Neyman
Eric Neyman is a first-year PhD student with the Theory Group under the supervision of professors Tim Roughgarden and Rocco Servedio. He looks forward to exploring the various disciplines of theoretical computer science. Neyman has earned three honorable mentions in the Putnam mathematical competition and graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2019 with a degree in mathematics.

Chang Xiao
Chang Xiao is a fourth-year PhD student in computer science who works with professor Changxi Zheng. His research focuses on building human-computer interaction systems using computational methods. He has developed methods in a range of applications and his research has attracted public interest, including media coverage from CNN, IEEE Spectrum, etc. Chang received a BS degree in computer science from Zhejiang University in 2016 and is a recipient of the Snap Fellowship in 2019.

Hengjie Zhang
Hengjie Zhang’s research interests are graph theory, algorithms, and data structure. He will join the theory group as a first-year PhD student working with Alexandr Andoni and Omri Weinstein. He won a gold medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics and a Yao Award Recognition Prize from Tsinghua University where he graduated with a degree in engineering in 2019.

Joseph Zuckerman
With the system-level design group, Joseph Zuckerman will work on heterogeneous system-on-chip architectures. He is a first-year PhD student interested in application-specific architectures, the integration of accelerators, and hardware design methodologies. Zuckerman completed a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Harvard University in 2019, with a focus on hardware architectures for machine learning applications.