Aviral Kumar, Serena Wang and Eric Wallace win 2022 Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD fellowships

Three EECS graduate students, Aviral Kumar (advisor: Sergey Levine), Serena Wang (advisors: Rediet Abebe and Michael Jordan), and Eric Wallace (advisors: Dan Klein and Dawn Song) have been named 2022 recipients of the Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD fellowship.  This fellowship recognizes graduate and postgraduate students in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning who are “emerging leaders in computer science and engineering” as demonstrated by their “innovative research, record as thought leaders and collaborators, and commitment to advance their respective fields.”  Kumar is working in the area of “Fundamentals of Machine Learning” to develop “reinforcement learning algorithms and tools that enable learning policies by effectively leveraging historical interaction data and understanding and addressing challenges in using RL with deep neural nets.” Wang is working in the area of “AI for Ethics and Fairness” to “foster positive long-term societal impact of ML by rethinking ML algorithms and practices, employing tools from robust optimization, constrained optimization, and statistical learning theory.”  Wallace is working in the area of “Privacy Preserving Machine Learning,” to make “NLP models more secure, private, and robust.” Apple Scholars receive support for their research, internship opportunities, and a two-year mentorship with an Apple researcher in their field.