Machine Learning and Systems Rising Stars

Congratulations to all 2023 Rising Stars!

What is ML and Systems Rising Stars?

The ML and Systems Rising Stars is an initiative designed to identify a cohort of early-to-late-stage and recently graduated PhD students, as well as other researchers with a relevant background, to develop community, foster research and career growth, enable collaborations, and discuss career opportunities among the rising generation of researchers at intersections of machine learning and systems.

This initiative has a number of key goals including:

Fostering academic and industry collaboration: Given the strong, collective interest in the intersection of machine learning and systems, we aim to foster collaboration across academia and industry. Providing connections, resources, and equitable access to such collaboration is a crucial step to building community.
Enabling growth: We aim to facilitate research and career growth of rising stars at intersections of machine learning and systems. This effort includes providing opportunities for recipients to explore research opportunities with invited panelists and speakers from industry and academia, necessary skills building sessions and networking sessions, and highlighting career opportunities across academic, industry, and other settings.
Promoting diversity: A core focus of this initiative is to identify and include a diverse range of ML and Systems researchers in the Rising Stars cohort with particular attention to historically underrepresented gender, racial, geographic, socioeconomic, and other vectors of identity in computing and technology.

Rising Stars Workshop

Rising Star recipients will be invited to an in-person workshop which includes opportunities to present and discuss your research, build career development skills, and interact with industry and academic partners in the machine learning and systems area.

Location: Google
When: August 17-18, 2023
Funding: Selected recipients will be funded to participate in the in-person ML and Systems rising stars workshop. Partipants will be reimbursed for reasonable travel expenses to attend, including flights, lodging, and food during the workshop.

How to Apply

Eligibility
The ML and Systems Rising Stars program is open to all graduate students and post-doctoral associates (in academic and industry institutions) with research backgrounds and/or interests in the machine learning and systems area. There are no strict guidelines for what year of graduate study applicants should be. Participants interested in both academic and industry career paths are welcome to apply. We strongly encourage individuals from historically marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds, including gender, racial, geographic, socioeconomic, and other vectors of identity in computing and technology, to apply.

Particular areas of research in the ML and Systems space include:

Hardware and systems for machine learning
Efficient algorithms, software, and frameworks for machine learning
Machine learning for systems
Datasets, benchmarks, tools, and methodologies for the machine learning ecosystem
Security and privacy for machine learning
Infrastructure support, profiling, and analyzing machine learning systems
Robust and resilient machine learning
Methods to enable responsible ML systems
Additional intersections of machine learning and systems

2024 Rising Start important dates:

2023 Rising Star applications are closed. Please check back for 2024 date announcements.

Application Details

Rising Star application materials include:

CV or Resume
Personal statement (500 words): Potential topics you can address include: your personal background and interests; your career path and future career interests; teaching and service; your personal experiences in DEI.
Research statement (500 words): Briefly describe your research interests.
Motivation and goals statement (300 words): What are your motivations and goals for applying to this program?
Contact information for reference: Optionally include contact information for one (1) reference. We may solicit letters later in the process.

Program Committee

Amir Yazdanbakhsh (Google)
Ana Klimovic (ETH Zurich)
Brandon Reagan (NYU)
David Stutz (DeepMind)
Francis Yan (Microsoft)
Gennady Pekhimenko (Univ. of Toronto / CentML / Vector Institute)
Hashim Sharif (AMD)
Jeff Zhang (ASU)
Newsha Ardalani (Meta)
Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi (UC Irvine)
Sasha Rush (Cornell Tech / HuggingFace)
Virginia Smith (CMU)

Steering Committee

Vijay Janapa Reddi (Harvard University)
Diana Marculescu (UT Austin)
Joel Emer (NVIDIA/MIT)

Organizing Team

Udit Gupta (Incoming Assistant Professor at Cornell Tech)
Abdulrahman Mahmoud (Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University)
Lillian Pentecost (Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Amherst College)

Contact Us

Email inquiries regarding the ML and Systems Rising Stars program and/or eligibility can be directed to mlsysrisingstars@gmail.com.