
The Meta Research PhD Fellowship program awards PhD candidates conducting research on the cusp of emerging topics across computer science, engineering, and behavioral science. To support their commitment to furthering research in some of Meta’s key interest areas, Fellows receive full coverage of tuition and university fees for up to two academic years, as well as a $42,000 stipend.
In addition to funding, Fellows are presented with numerous opportunities to engage with Meta researchers, enabling them to gain further insight into industry research and highlight their research. This may include a speaker series, collaborations, and virtual networking events.
Now in its 12th year, the Meta Research PhD Fellowship has supported more than 200 PhD candidates from around the world. This year, we received over 3,200 applications from over 100 universities worldwide and selected 21 outstanding Fellows from 12 universities.
We proudly congratulate this year’s winners, and we thank everyone who took the time to apply and submit a referral.
2023 Meta PhD Fellows
AI System HW SW Co-Design

Finalists: Zheng Wang, University of California, Santa Barbara; Colin Unger, Stanford University; Shang Wang, University of Toronto
Applied Statistics

Finalists: Zhen Lin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Dhruv Narinder Malik, Carnegie Mellon University; Tongzhou Wang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rohan Taori, Stanford University
AR/VR Battery Research

Finalists: Muhammad Aadil Khan, Stanford University; Reid Andrew Dressler, Dalhousie University; Nag Young Kim, Yonsei University; Divya Rathore, Dalhousie University
AR/VR Computer Graphics
Finalists: Mikaela Angelina Uy, Stanford University; Benjamin Attal, Carnegie Mellon University; Zhaoxi Chen, Nanyang Technological University; Daniel Severo, University of Toronto; Edward Lu, Carnegie Mellon University
AR/VR Future Technologies

Finalists: Breigha Adeyemo, University of Illinois Chicago; Savannah Halow, University of Nevada, Reno; Zhaoyuan Su (Nick), University of California, Irvine; Julie Michelle Abdinoor, Purdue University
AR/VR Human Understanding
Finalists: Hong-Xing “Koven” Yu, Stanford University; Omid Taheri, University of Tübingen; Yifeng Jiang, Stanford University; Songwei Ge, University of Maryland, College Park
AR/VR Human-Computer Interaction
Finalists: Junxiao Shen, University of Cambridge; Anandghan Waghmare, University of Washington; Yiyue Luo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
AR/VR Photonics and Optics

Finalists: Ogulcan Emre Orsel, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Ruiming Cao, University of California, Berkeley
AR/VR Wireless

Finalists: Tara Boroushaki, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Chenning Li, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Qihang Zeng, National University of Singapore; Hao Luo, Arizona State University
Audio Presence

Finalists: Tobias Daniel Kabzinski, RWTH Aachen University; Shoken Eckhart Kaneko, University of Maryland, College Park; Andrea Cicero, University of Salford; Wusheng Liang, Carnegie Mellon University
Augmented Reality Audio

Finalists: Jane Brown, University of Memphis; Dennis Fedorishin, University at Buffalo; Yanru Jiang, University of California, Los Angeles
Computational Social Sciences

Finalists: Benjamin Laufer, Cornell Tech; Peizhao Li, Brandeis University; Kushal Chawla, University of Southern California; Lucy Li, University of California, Berkeley
Economics and Computation

Finalists: Zhexiao Lin, University of California, Berkeley; Xizhi Tan, Drexel University; Kunhe Yang, University of California, Berkeley; Amilcar Enrique Velez Salamanca, Northwestern University
Human Computer Interaction - Social Media, People, and Society
Finalists: Busra Tanriverdi Ozkan, Temple University; Duyen Phuong Tran, Columbia University; Daniel Nkemelu, Georgia Institute of Technology
Privacy and Data Practices

Finalists: Shiza Ali, Boston University; Sushmita Laila Khan, Clemson University; Zainab Agha, Vanderbilt University
Security and Privacy

Finalists: Wei-Ning Chen, Stanford University; Armin Namavari, Cornell University; Kewen Wu, University of California, Berkeley; Lucy Qin, Brown University
Technology Policy Research

Finalists: Alison Feder Cooper, Cornell University; Breigha Adeyemo, University of Illinois Chicago; Pariroo Ratta, Harvard University; Shira Zilberstein, Harvard University