Announcing the Google MOOC Focused Research Awards

Posted by Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations, and Aimin Zhu, University Relations Manager, APAC

Last year, Google and Tsinghua University hosted the 2014 APAC MOOC Focused Faculty Workshop, an event designed to share, brainstorm and generate ideas aimed at fostering MOOC innovation. As a result of the ideas generated at the workshop, we solicited proposals from the attendees for research collaborations that would advance important topics in MOOC development.

After expert reviews and committee discussions, we are pleased to announce the following recipients of the MOOC Focused Research Awards. These awards cover research exploring new interactions to enhance learning experience, personalized learning, online community building, interoperability of online learning platforms and education accessibility:

• “MOOC Visual Analytics” - Michael Ginda, Indiana University, United States
• “Improvement of students’ interaction in MOOCs using participative networks” - Pedro A. Pernías Peco, Universidad de Alicante, Spain
• “Automated Analysis of MOOC Discussion Content to Support Personalised Learning” - Katrina Falkner, The University of Adelaide, Australia
• “Extending the Offline Capability of Spoken Tutorial Methodology” - Kannan Moudgalya, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
• “Launching the Pan Pacific ISTP (Information Science and Technology Program) through MOOCs” - Yasushi Kodama, Hosei University, Japan
• “Fostering Engagement and Social Learning with Incentive Schemes and Gamification Elements in MOOCs” - Thomas Schildhauer, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Germany
• “Reusability Measurement and Social Community Analysis from MOOC Content Users” - Timothy K. Shih, National Central University, Taiwan

In order to further support these projects and foster collaboration, we have begun pairing the award recipients with Googlers pursuing online education research as well as product development teams.

Google is committed to supporting innovation in online learning at scale, and we congratulate the recipients of the MOOC Focused Research Awards. It is our belief that these collaborations will further develop the potential of online education, and we are very pleased to work with these researchers to jointly push the frontier of MOOCs.

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Announcing Google’s 2015 Global PhD Fellows

Posted by Michael Rennaker, Google University Relations

In 2009, Google created the PhD Fellowship program to recognize and support outstanding graduate students doing exceptional research in Computer Science and related disciplines. Now in its seventh year, our fellowship programs have collectively supported over 200 graduate students in Australia, China and East Asia, India, North America, Europe and the Middle East who seek to shape and influence the future of technology.

Reflecting our continuing commitment to building mutually beneficial relationships with the academic community, we are excited to announce the 44 students from around the globe who are recipients of the award. We offer our sincere congratulations to Google’s 2015 Class of PhD Fellows!

Australia

• Bahar Salehi, Natural Language Processing (University of Melbourne)
• Siqi Liu, Computational Neuroscience (University of Sydney)
• Qian Ge, Systems (University of New South Wales)

China and East Asia

• Bo Xin, Artificial Intelligence (Peking University)
• Xingyu Zeng, Computer Vision (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
• Suining He, Mobile Computing (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
• Zhenzhe Zheng, Mobile Networking (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
• Jinpeng Wang, Natural Language Processing (Peking University)
• Zijia Lin, Search and Information Retrieval (Tsinghua University)
• Shinae Woo, Networking and Distributed Systems (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
• Jungdam Won, Robotics (Seoul National University)

India

• Palash Dey, Algorithms (Indian Institute of Science)
• Avisek Lahiri, Machine Perception (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur)
• Malavika Samak, Programming Languages and Software Engineering (Indian Institute of Science)

Europe and the Middle East

• Heike Adel, Natural Language Processing (University of Munich)
• Thang Bui, Speech Technology (University of Cambridge)
• Victoria Caparrós Cabezas, Distributed Systems (ETH Zurich)
• Nadav Cohen, Machine Learning (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Josip Djolonga, Probabilistic Inference (ETH Zurich)
• Jakob Julian Engel, Computer Vision (Technische Universität München)
• Nikola Gvozdiev, Computer Networking (University College London)
• Felix Hill, Language Understanding (University of Cambridge)
• Durk Kingma, Deep Learning (University of Amsterdam)
• Massimo Nicosia, Statistical Natural Language Processing (University of Trento)
• George Prekas, Operating Systems (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
• Roman Prutkin, Graph Algorithms (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
• Siva Reddy, Multilingual Semantic Parsing (The University of Edinburgh)
• Immanuel Trummer, Structured Data Analysis (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
• Margarita Vald, Security (Tel Aviv University)

North America

• Waleed Ammar, Natural Language Processing (Carnegie Mellon University)
• Justin Meza, Systems Reliability (Carnegie Mellon University)
• Nick Arnosti, Market Algorithms (Stanford University)
• Osbert Bastani, Programming Languages (Stanford University)
• Saurabh Gupta, Computer Vision (University of California, Berkeley)
• Masoud Moshref Javadi, Computer Networking (University of Southern California)
• Muhammad Naveed, Security (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Aaron Parks, Mobile Networking (University of Washington)
• Kyle Rector, Human Computer Interaction (University of Washington)
• Riley Spahn, Privacy (Columbia University)
• Yun Teng, Computer Graphics (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• Carl Vondrick, Machine Perception, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Xiaolan Wang, Structured Data (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
• Tan Zhang, Mobile Systems (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
• Wojciech Zaremba, Machine Learning (New York University)

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Announcing the 2015 North American Google PhD Fellows

Posted by Michael Rennaker, Google University Relations

In 2009, Google created the PhD Fellowship program to recognize and support outstanding graduate students doing exceptional work in Computer Science (CS) and related disciplines. In that time we’ve seen past recipients add depth and breadth to CS by developing new ideas and research directions, from building new intelligence models to changing the way in which we interact with computers to advancing into faculty positions, where they go on to train the next generation of researchers.

Reflecting our continuing commitment to building strong relations with the global academic community, we are excited to announce the latest North American Google PhD Fellows. The following 15 fellowship recipients were chosen from a highly competitive group, and represent the outstanding quality of nominees provided by our university partners:

• Justin Meza, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Systems Reliability (Carnegie Mellon University)
• Waleed Ammar, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Natural Language Processing (Carnegie Mellon University)
• Aaron Parks, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Mobile Networking (University of Washington)
• Kyle Rector, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Human Computer Interaction (University of Washington)
• Nick Arnosti, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Market Algorithms (Stanford University)
• Osbert Bastani, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Programming Languages (Stanford University)
• Carl Vondrick, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Machine Perception, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Wojciech Zaremba, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Machine Learning (New York University)
• Xiaolan Wang, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Structured Data (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
• Muhammad Naveed, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Security (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Masoud Moshref Javadi, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Computer Networking (University of Southern California)
• Riley Spahn, Google US/CanadaFellowship in Privacy (Columbia University)
• Saurabh Gupta, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Computer Vision (University of California, Berkeley)
• Yun Teng, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Computer Graphics (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• Tan Zhang, Google US/Canada Fellowship in Mobile Systems (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

This group of students represent the next generation of researchers who endeavor to solve some of the most interesting challenges in Computer Science. We offer our congratulations, and look forward to their future contributions to the research community with high expectations.

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Announcing the Google CS Engagement Small Awards Program

Posted by Leslie Yeh Johnson, University Relations

(cross-posted on the Google for Education blog)

College students are more interested than ever in studying computer science. There has been an unprecedented increase in enrollment in Computer Science undergraduate programs over the past six years. Harvard University’s popular introductory CS course CS50 has recently claimed the spot as the most enrolled course on campus. An astounding 50% of Harvey Mudd’s graduates received engineering degrees this year. However, while the overall number of students in introductory computer science courses continue to climb, the number of students who go on to complete undergraduate degrees in this field, particularly among women and under-represented minorities, does not match this increase in individual course enrollment (2013 Taulbee Survey).

Recent findings show that while students may begin a CS degree program, retaining students after their first year remains an issue. Research indicates that one of the strongest factors in the retention of students in undergraduate CS degrees is early exposure to engaging courses and course material, such as high quality assignments that are meaningful and relevant to the student’s life or classroom activities that encourage student-to-student interaction. When an instructor or department imbeds these practices into the introductory CS classroom, students remain excited about CS and are more likely to complete their undergraduate CS degree.

At Google we believe in the importance of preparing the next generation of computer scientists. To this end, we’ve created the CS Engagement Small Grants Program to support educators teaching introductory computer science courses in reaching their engagement and retention goals. We’ll give unrestricted gifts of $5,000 to the selected applicants’ universities, towards the execution of engaging CS1 or CS2 courses in the 2014-2015 school year. We encourage educators who are teaching CS1 and CS2 courses at the post-secondary level to apply to the Google CS Engagement Small Grants Program. Applications will be accepted through November 15, 2014 and will be evaluated on an ongoing basis. If you’re interested in applying, please check out the Call for Proposals.

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Announcing the 2015 Google European Doctoral Fellows

Posted by David Harper, University Relations and Beate List, Research Programs

In 2009, Google created the PhD Fellowship program to recognize and support outstanding graduate students doing exceptional work in Computer Science and related disciplines. The following year, we launched the program in Europe as the Google European Doctoral Fellowship program. Alumni of the European program occupy a variety of positions including faculty positions (Ofer Meshi, Cynthia Liem), academic research positions (Roland Angst, Carola Doerr née Winzen) and positions in industry (Yair Adato, Peter Hosek, Neil Houlsby).

Reflecting our continuing commitment to building strong relations with the European academic community, we are delighted to announce the 2015 Google European Doctoral Fellows. The following fifteen fellowship recipients were selected from an outstanding set of PhD students nominated by our partner universities:

• Heike Adel, Fellowship in Natural Language Processing (University of Munich)
• Thang Bui, Fellowship in Speech Technology (University of Cambridge)
• Victoria Caparrós Cabezas, Fellowship in Distributed Systems (ETH Zurich)
• Nadav Cohen, Fellowship in Machine Learning (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Josip Djolonga, Fellowship in Probabilistic Inference (ETH Zurich)
• Jakob Julian Engel, Fellowship in Computer Vision (Technische Universität München)
• Nikola Gvozdiev, Fellowship in Computer Networking (University College London)
• Felix Hill, Fellowship in Language Understanding (University of Cambridge)
• Durk Kingma, Fellowship in Deep Learning (University of Amsterdam)
• Massimo Nicosia, Fellowship in Statistical Natural Language Processing (University of Trento)
• George Prekas, Fellowship in Operating Systems (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
• Roman Prutkin, Fellowship in Graph Algorithms (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
• Siva Reddy, Fellowship in Multilingual Semantic Parsing (The University of Edinburgh)
• Immanuel Trummer, Fellowship in Structured Data Analysis (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
• Margarita Vald, Fellowship in Security (Tel Aviv University)

This group of students represent the next generation of researchers who will endeavor to solve some of the most interesting challenges in Computer Science. We offer our congratulations, and look forward to their future contributions to the research community with high expectation.

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Celebrating the First Set of Google Geo Education Awardees and Announcing Round Two

Posted by Dave Thau, Senior Developer Advocate

Googles GeoEDU Outreach program is excited to announce the opening of the second round of our Geo Education Awards, aimed at supporting qualifying educational institutions who are creating content and curricula for their mapping, remote sensing, or GIS initiatives.

If you are an educator in these areas, we encourage you to apply for an award. To celebrate the first round of awardees, and give a sense of the kind of work we have supported in the past, here are brief descriptions of some of our previous awards.

Nicholas Clinton, Tsinghua University
Development of online remote sensing course content using Google Earth Engine
Nick is building 10 labs for an introductory remote sensing class. Topics include studying electromagnetic radiation, image processing, time series analysis, and change detection. The labs are being taught currently, and materials will be made available when the course has been completed. From Lab 6:

Lets look at some imagery in Earth Engine.  Search for the place Mountain View, CA, USA.  What the heck is all that stuff!?  We are looking at this scene because of the diverse mix of things on the Earth surface.

Add the Landsat 8 32-day EVI composite.  What do you observe?  Recall that the more vegetative cover the higher the index.  It looks like the "greenest" targets in this scene are golf courses.

Lets say we dont really care about vegetation (not true, of course!), but we do care about water.  Lets see if the water indices can help us decipher our Mountain View mystery scene.

Dana Tomlin, University of Pennsylvania
Geospatial Programming: Childs Play
Dana is creating documentation, lesson plans, sample scripts, and homework assignments for each week in a 13-week, university-level course on geospatial programming. The course uses the Python computer programming language to utilize, customize, and extend the capabilities of three geographic information systems: Google’s Earth Engine, ESRI’s ArcGIS, and the open-source QGIS.

Declan G. De Paor, Old Dominion University
A Modular Approach to Introducing Google Mapping Technologies into Geoscience Curricula Worldwide
Declans award supports senior student Chloe Constants who is helping design Google Maps Engine and Google Earth Engine modules for existing geoscience coursework, primarily focused on volcanic and tectonic hazards, and digital mapping. Declan and Chloe will present the modules at faculty development workshops in person and online. They see GME/GEE as a terrific way to offer authentic undergraduate research experiences to non-traditional geoscience students.

Mary Elizabeth Killilea, New York University
Google Geospatial Tools in a Global Classroom: “Where the City Meets the Sea: Studies in Coastal Urban Environments"
Mary and the Global Technology Services team at NYU are developing a land­ cover change lab using Google Earth Engine. NYU has campuses around the world, so their labs are written to be used globally. In fact, students in four campuses around the globe are currently collecting and sharing data for the lab. Students at their sites analyze their local cities, but do so in a global context.

One group of students used Android mobile devices to collect land use data in New Yorks Battery Park.

While others in the same course collected these points in Abu Dhabi. Upon collection, the observations were automatically uploaded, mapped, and shared.

Scott Nowicki and Chris Edwards, University of Nevada at Las Vegas
Advanced Manipulation and Visualization of Remote Sensing Datasets with Google Earth Engine
Scott and Chris are taking biology, geoscience, and social science students on a field trip to collect geological data, and are generating screencast tutorials to show how these data can be queried, downloaded, calibrated, manipulated and interpreted using free tools including Google Earth Engine. These tutorials may be freely incorporated into any geospatial course, and all the field site data and analyses will be publicly released and published, giving a full description of what features are available to investigate, and how best to interpret both the remote sensing datasets and ground truth activities.

Steven Whitmeyer and Shelley Whitmeyer, James Madison University
Using Google Earth to Model Geologic Change Through Time
Steven and Shelley are building exercises for introductory geoscience courses focusing on coastal change, and glacial landform change. These exercises incorporate targets and goals of the Next Generation Science Standards. They are also developing tools to create new tectonic reconstructions of how continents and tectonic plates have moved since Pangaea breakup. Some of the current animations are available here and here.

We hope this overview of previous award recipients gives you a sense for the range of educational activities our GeoEDU awards are supporting. If you are working on innovative geospatial education projects, we invite you to apply for a GeoEDU award.

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