Facebook Fellowship Program (2024)

The program is open to students in any year of their PhD study. We also encourage people of diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply, especially those from traditionally under-represented minority groups. Applications are evaluated based on the strength of the student’s research statement, publication record, and recommendation letters.

Winners of the Fellowship are entitled to receive two years of paid tuition and fees, a $42,000 annual stipend to cover living and conference travel costs, a paid visit to Meta headquarters for the annual Fellowship Summit, and various opportunities to engage with Meta researchers.

Applications must include

• 500-word research summary that clearly identifies the area of focus, importance to the field, and applicability to Facebook of the anticipated research during the award (reference the available fellowships below)
• Two letters of recommendation, including one from an academic advisor. You will be asked to provide your references’ contact information, and they will receive a corresponding form to submit their letters.

Research Areas

Applications will be accepted from students with research related to one of the following areas: 

• AI System HW SW Co-Design: We welcome applications from students doing research and developing high-performance software and hardware technologies for AI at datacenter scale. We are particularly interested in work at the intersection of algorithms (including model compression & numerical optimization), benchmarking (including perf models, profiling and debugging tools for accelerators & cluster architectures) as well as distributed systems (including distributed inference and training). Special attention will be given to development of software stacks and frameworks addressing software and hardware co-design of quantized distributed inference and low precision distributed training.
• Applied Statistics: We would like to support students who are working on novel techniques in statistical modeling and inference. Areas of research include but are not limited to inference in high dimensions, causal inference, graphical models, multi-armed bandits, optimization, regression and classification, clustering and segmentation, graph partitioning, entity linkage and data privacy. In addition, we are interested in research related to model auditing and safety, including label sanity and certainty, auditing model performance across segments, and detection and mitigation of unintended outcomes. Applications of interest include but are not limited to user modeling, detecting abuse and violations, experimentation, surveys, measurement of harms using models and efficient sampling techniques.
• AR/VR Computer Graphics: We would like to support students who are working on advancing the state-of-the-art in computer graphics and efficient real-time rendering for augmented and virtual reality. Topics of interest include but are not limited to ray tracing and ray casting hardware, physically based shading, Split/distributed rendering, image and video compression, differentiable rendering, graphics applications of machine learning methods, geometry processing and compression, perceptual rendering, high quality avatars, global illumination, scene prefiltering, and rendering complexity reduction.
• AR/VR Future Technologies: We would like to support students whose research sits at the intersection of future technologies (augmented reality, virtual reality, video presence, etc.) and the role of those technologies in people’s daily life. This includes but is not limited to research on the integration of emerging technologies in individual wellness, the workplace, and social interactions more broadly. Successful applicants can come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, but we’re especially interested in seeing applications from those with backgrounds in the social sciences, HCI, communication, public health or with a special interest of topics around diversity & inclusion.
• AR/VR Human Computer Interaction: We would like to support PhD students in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) who have established research programs in intelligent user interfaces, adaptive interfaces, ubiquitous computing, sensing, haptics, input and interaction design. Of particular interest (but not exclusively) are students who have applied their research towards solving challenging HCI problems in the domain of AR/VR.
• AR/VR Human Understanding: We would like to support students who are working on advancing the state-of-the-art in human understanding for AR/VR. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, tracking and modelling humans and objects, action and gesture recognition, non-rigid fusion and reconstruction (e.g. NeRF), image synthesis (e.g. GAN), segmentation, differentiable rendering, novel text input techniques, novel sensors / sensor fusion (e.g. EMG, accelerometer, ...) and efficient ML techniques to run these methods on AR/VR devices.
• AR/VR Perception, Cognition, and Action: We would like to support students who work to build a generalizable understanding of human behavior. Topics of interest include but are not limited to perception and psychophysics, motor control and learning, and attention and cognitive control. Our primary application of interest is AR /VR interaction, but we are particularly interested in supporting students whose work creates generalizable basic knowledge (e.g. models, generalized experimental results, or theoretical frameworks) that can be applied to our domains of interest rather than work that is specific to particular devices or interfaces.
• AR/VR Photonics and Optics: We would like to support students that are excited about developing technology in Photonics and Optics that can be applied to VR and AR visual systems. Topics of interest include functional planar optical elements, highly efficient light sources, optical and photonic imaging devices, unique optical materials and structures.
• Audio Presence: We would like to support students who are working on technologies related to sound capture systems and virtual auditory displays, with applications towards next-generation telecommunications systems. Areas of research include but are not limited to microphone array processing, speech enhancement and noise reduction, spatial signal encoding and compression, acoustic propagation simulation, HRTF personalization, and equalization. In addition, we are interested in research related to perceptual evaluation and optimization, and user experience research. Our goal is to enable natural communication and interaction with realistic acoustic perception in virtual contexts.
• Augmented Reality Audio: We would like to support students working in speech and audio processing for human-human communication in challenging situations. Topics of interest include but are not limited to perception of sounds by humans, speech enhancement, auditory scene analysis, acoustic event detection, audio-visual modeling and sentiment analysis.
• Blockchain and Cryptoeconomics: We would like to support students working on novel techniques for building decentralized databases of programmable resources. Topics of interest include all areas related to high assurance, scalability and security of the technology, in particular blockchain, smart contracts, financial technologies and payments, transactions, distributed systems, concurrency and formal methods.
• Computational Social Science: We would like to support students who are advancing research in the social sciences with computational approaches. Topics of interest include but are not limited to theoretic and practical models and analysis of online communities and interactions, diffusion of information and misinformation, causal inference in networks, dynamics of norms, trust and social capital, civic participation and empowerment, social processes after natural disasters and crises, social media- and other-based datasets for good, and equity in online spaces.
• Database Systems: We welcome applications from students working on novel approaches to data systems architecture and usage, including, but not limited to, improving the efficiency and reliability of large scale data processing systems, improving the interaction between database software and the underlying hardware, exploring novel techniques around query processing and data indexing, formatting, partitioning, and movement, transaction processing, replication, as well as novel approaches to privacy and security in data management.
• Distributed Systems: We would like to support students working on a broad set of topics related to all kinds of distributed systems, including but not limited to fault tolerance, reliability, system management, scale, performance, efficiency, and security.
• Economics and Computation: We support students who are passionate about applied or theoretical work in the areas of game theory, optimization, operations management and econometrics. Example research topics of particular relevance include ad auction design, mechanism design for social good, applications of combinatorial and convex optimization at large scale, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning, but we encourage and welcome applications from researchers doing work on other topics in the disciplines above.
• Human Computer Interaction - Social Media, People, & Society: We would like to support PhD students in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and social computing who have established research programs in understanding the impact of social media on people and society, focused on key social or informational outcomes. Topics of interest include but are not limited to civic engagement/polarization, social support/health, and authoritative information/misinformation. Methods may cover qualitative (e.g., ethnographic, interview, etc.) or quantitative (e.g., survey, experiments, computational, etc.) approaches. A focus on populations outside of Western markets or with vulnerable/marginalized groups is encouraged.
• Networking: We would like to support students active in the research and development of scalable, performant, reliable, efficient and secure wired network infrastructure across data centers, the wide area (IP and optical), and Internet peering. The networking technologies span the entire networking stack (L1-L7); range from chip/interface/system hardware design to distributed systems for control, data, and management planes; and cover the whole network lifecycle, from planning/design/analytics, to provisioning/deployment/migration, to monitoring/troubleshooting/visualization. This also includes applications of related disciplines such as machine learning, optimization and algorithmic theory, and formal verification to the networking domain.
• Privacy and Data Use: We would like to support students who are working on understanding privacy and data use, specifically how to make data more transparent to users and give people more control of their data. This includes, but is not limited to, research on transparency in online behavioral advertising.
• Programming Languages: Applications are welcome from students who are interested in the design and implementation of programming languages and related tools. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: program synthesis, type systems, static analysis, optimizing compilation, runtimes, formal specification and verification, and high-level support for features such as concurrency, data privacy, control of side effects, and probabilistic and differentiable programming.
• Security and Privacy: We would like to support students with established proficiency in the field and passion about solving complex security challenges. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: systems, software, and network security; privacy; cryptography; malware; abuse detection and mitigation; authentication and authorization.
• Technology Policy Research: We would like to support PhD students working in the area of technology policy research. We welcome applicants who think critically about the theory and practice of policies that shape the long term impact of technology on society. This is an interdisciplinary field and we welcome candidates from disciplines that include but are not limited to the social sciences, science and technology studies, history and the humanities.