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Applications are now open for the Google PhD Fellowship Program for for outstanding PhD students worldwide (US $15 000 awarded)

Ednah Carrick March 28, 2026

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Closing Date: 30 April 2026

Applications are now open for the Google PhD Fellowship Program for for outstanding PhD students worldwide (US $15 000 awarded)

Overview

Google PhD Fellowships directly support graduate students as they pursue their PhD.

Nurturing and maintaining strong relations with the academic community is a top priority at Google. The Google PhD Fellowship Program was created to recognize outstanding graduate students doing exceptional and innovative research in areas relevant to computer science and related fields. Fellowships support promising PhD candidates of all backgrounds who seek to influence the future of technology. Google research teams impact technology used by people all over the world and encourage people of a wide range of backgrounds to apply. Google currently offer fellowships in Africa, Australia, Canada, East Asia, Europe, India, Latin America, the Middle East, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and the United States.

How to apply

The Google PhD Fellowship Program welcomes applications for outstanding PhD students worldwide. The details of each Fellowship vary by region. Please see Google FAQ for eligibility requirements and application instructions.

Application Process

PhD students from Africa, Australia, Canada, East Asia, Europe, India, Latin America, the Middle East, New Zealand, Southeast Asia and the United States, must be nominated for the fellowship by their university. Applications must be submitted by an official representative of the university during the application window. Please contact your department or graduate school for more information on the internal nomination process.

Research areas of focus

Google PhD Fellowship students are a select group recognized by Google researchers and their institutions as some of the most promising young academics in the world. The Fellowships are awarded to students who represent the future of research in the fields listed below. Note that region-specific research areas will be listed in application forms during the application window.

Computer Architecture

Computer architecture is foundational for computer science generally, and Google in particular. Google’s architecture research is diverse and deep, from processor design to understanding how AI can profoundly change the way we think about how we design circuits. Google is interested in proposals in all areas of computer architecture that demonstrate creativity, deep understanding, and bold thinking.

Algorithms and Optimization

Algorithms and optimization form the foundations of computer science, focusing on designing efficient methods to solve complex contemporary problems including problems with applications in machine learning, data science, and modern AI. The primary goals in this area are to create methods that improve resource efficiency and sometimes offer guarantees on the quality of the solution. This line of research is crucial since it studies the solvability of problems through a set of tools that nicely complement machine learning techniques. For this area, Google call for proposals specifically in the areas of:

Combinatorial optimization
Market algorithms
Operations research
Continuous optimization and learning
Scalable algorithms
Other

Health Research

Subtopics: Population health, Complex medical data, Consumer health

Google’s Health research aims to advance AI and technology that helps people live healthier lives. Achieving this goal will require collaborative research with public officials, clinicians, and consumers. In partnership with public officials, Google is creating tools to understand population level health. With clinicians, Google is developing novel algorithms to better understand and make use of complex medical data such as images, text, lab tests, and genomics. With consumers, Google is developing technology that helps people find high quality health information and better understand their own health status. By focusing on inclusive, transformative research Google aims to improve the lives of billions of people. For this area, Google calls for proposals specifically in the areas of:

Generating and understanding large datasets of the world to derive useful insights for improving population health, especially in under resourced regions or communities
Novel algorithm development for better understanding of complex medical data, with focus areas in novel methods, novel applications, or underserved settings
Novel methods, including both software and hardware, that helps extract health insights cheaper, faster, or better

Human-Computer Interaction

Subtopics: Human-AI Collaboration, AI for Accessibility, Responsible AI in HCI, Interactive Machine Learning, Extended Reality (XR).

The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research area aims to support academic research advancing innovative, human-centered interactive systems. Google is particularly interested in proposals exploring foundational principles, guidelines, and theories shaping the future of HCI in the era of generative AI, including but not limited to:

Human-AI Collaboration: Novel interaction paradigms, explainable AI, and trust in AI systems.
AI for Accessibility: Leveraging AI to make technology more inclusive.
Responsible AI in HCI: Ethical, fair AI systems that respect user privacy and agency.
Interactive Machine Learning: Enabling users to understand, control, and interact with ML models.
Extended Reality (XR): Novel perceptual algorithms and interactive systems for spatial and intelligent interaction in extended reality.

While Google welcomes research across all HCI sub-areas, Google is particularly excited about proposals aligned with Google’s focus on predictive and intelligent UIs, mobile and ubiquitous computing, extended reality (XR), cross-device interaction, social computing, and interactive visualization.

Machine Learning and ML Foundations

Machine learning, a cornerstone of Google’s research initiatives, encompasses a vast spectrum of exploration. This includes fundamental theoretical investigations into algorithms and their underlying principles, as well as the development of practical applications that address real-world challenges. Through these diverse research endeavors, Google aims to advance the state-of-the-art in machine learning and harness its potential to drive innovation across a wide range of domains. For this area, Google call for proposals specifically in the areas of:

Learning algorithms & techniques
Learning theory
Federated learning
Information theory
Optimization for ML algorithms
Reinforcement learning
Robotics
Recommender systems

Machine Perception

Subtopics: Audio / Image / Video Understanding, Action Recognition, Digital Media Processing, Neural and Classical Image/Video Compression, Object Detection and Recognition, Speech, Robotics

Machine perception researchers at Google develop algorithms and systems to tackle a wide range of tasks, including action recognition, object recognition and detection, hand-writing recognition, audio understanding, perceptual similarity measures, and image and video compression. A main focus is on generative methods for creating exciting and novel images and video.

Natural Language Processing

Subtopics: Knowledge Retrieval & Use, Grounding & Factuality, Agentic Workflows and Tool Use, Conversational Agents, Translation & Multilinguality, Multimodality & Language Grounding to Vision, Evaluation & Data, Novel Applications of LLMs.

Google research in Natural Language Processing comprises multiple research groups working on a wide range of natural language understanding and generation projects. Google researchers are focused on advancing the state of the art in natural language technologies and accelerating adoption everywhere for the benefit of the user. Natural Language Processing and Understanding plays a major role in driving Google’s company-wide efforts as language understanding is the key to unlocking Google’s approach: “Build a more helpful Google for everyone that increases the world’s knowledge, success, health, and happiness.”

Privacy, Safety, and Security

Google Privacy, Safety, and Security is committed to ensuring that the internet is safer for everyone. To meet this goal, Google supports and partners with academia to bring about state of the art advancements across a broad range of privacy, security, and safety areas. For this area, Google call for proposals specifically on:

Novel applications of AI for privacy, security, and safety
Ensuring the privacy, security, and safety of AI systems
User and measurement studies of privacy, security, and safety
Applied cryptography
Differential privacy
Hardware security and side-channel analysis
Software vulnerabilities, software supply chains, and fuzzing

Topics outside of these areas will still be considered. However, Google encourages applicants to align their proposals with one of the above topics.

Quantum Computing

Two primary goals of Google’s Quantum AI research are to develop a fault tolerant quantum computer that is capable of handling commercial, quantum-advantaged workloads and to identify novel applications that can be executed on quantum hardware. Google actively collaborate with academic partners to advance these goals and we welcome the submission of proposals containing innovative ideas. For this area, Google calls for proposals specifically in the areas of:

Quantum algorithms
Quantum error correction
Early fault-tolerant quantum computing
NISQ experiments, prioritizing scientific discovery or beyond classical
Superconducting qubits
Classical methods for simulating quantum algorithms

Software Engineering and Programming Languages

Research on all aspects of software, including software engineering and programming languages. This includes software development methodologies and tools, debugging practices and tools, software testing strategies and tools, cooperation strategies for developers, interface and library design, programming language implementation, code optimization and verification techniques, etc.

Systems, Networking, and Cloud Computing

Research for Systems, Networking and Cloud Computing focuses on exploration of future software and hardware for global distributed systems at unprecedented scale. Google has interests ranging over the entire SW/HW stack: from firmware to operating system kernels to global storage to ML execution environments and cloud-scale orchestration; from novel networking hardware to communications protocols and network management, both for datacenters and global networks; and from custom processors to custom HW accelerators and their systems infrastructure.

Review criteria

Applications are evaluated on the strength of the research proposal, research impact, student academic achievements, and leadership potential. Research proposals are evaluated for innovative concepts that are relevant to Google’s research areas, as well as aspects of robustness and potential impact to the field. Proposals should include the direction and any plans of where your work is going in addition to a comprehensive description of the research you are pursuing.

In Canada and the United States, East Asia and Latin America, essay responses are evaluated in addition to application materials to determine an overall recommendation.