The Google PhD Fellowship program supports PhD students in computer science and related fields, and is part of our commitment to building strong relationships with the global academic community. In our most recent round three Australians have been recognised for their outstanding efforts.

Bahar Salehi, Google Australia Fellowship in Natural Language Processing (University of Melbourne, Computing and Information Systems) 
Research Proposal Title: Flexible Language-Independent Multiword Expression Analysis. 

• Bahar owes her interest in computer science to early exposure to games programmed in BASIC by her father. While still in primary school, with the encouragement of her dad, she taught herself to code, and wrote her first program to compose music by the age of 14. Now completing her PhD at Melbourne University she is focusing on Natural Language Processing and Multi Word Expressions to solve challenges of language and expression between computers and humans. 

Siqi Liu, Google Australia Fellowship in Computational Neuroscience (University of Sydney, School of Information Technologies) 
Research Proposal Title: Neuropsychiatric Prediction with Longitudinal Multi-Modal Neuroimaging

• A love for philosophy combined with an understanding of the digital revolution let Siqi into computer science as a career. Siqi’s research in computational neuroscience is at the intersection of medicine, biology, applied mathematics and physics. The modelling work Siqi is developing will not only help with medical diagnosis and care, but also help to progress research in Artificial Intelligence. 

Qian Ge, Google Australia Fellowship in Systems (University of New South Wales, School of Computer Science & Engineering) 
Research Proposal Title: Low Overhead Operating System Mechanisms for Eliminating Microarchitectural Timing Side Channels 

•  Qian’s research in Systems is focused on operating system design, hardware resource partitioning, and information security. She hopes her research will lead to the creation of more trustworthy operating systems for security-critical systems, ranging from cloud computing platforms to military-style cross-domain devices. 

By supporting these three Australian Fellows we recognise their significant academic achievements and hope that they will go on to be leaders in their respective fields. We look forward to building even stronger links between industry and academia to help push important research forward in Australia.

Posted by Sally-Ann Williams, Google Engineering Community & Outreach Manager