Google Research Scholar Program for early career professors
Google has opened applications for the Google Research Scholar Program, which aims to support early-career professors conducting research in fields relevant to Google. The program provides unrestricted gifts to support research at institutions worldwide, with a focus on funding world-class research conducted by early-career professors. The initiative is designed to foster collaborations with new professors and encourage long-term relationships between researchers and Google.
Funding and Usage
The program offers funding of up to $60,000 USD, which will be granted to the university where the research is conducted. The funds are intended to support the professor's research efforts during the academic year in which the award is provided. These funds are not meant for overhead or indirect costs.
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants must be full-time Assistant, Associate, or Professors at a university or degree-granting research institution at the time of application submission. Additionally, applicants must have received their PhD within seven years of the submission deadline (e.g., applicants in 2024 must have received their PhD in 2017 or later). Post-doctoral staff can serve as co-principal investigators (co-PIs) but cannot be the primary principal investigator (PI).
Exceptions may be made for applicants who have been teaching for seven years or fewer and experienced delays due to reasons like working in industry, parental leave, or leave of absence. Such applicants can request an exception, which must be documented in the application.
Application Process
Each applicant can submit only one application per round. Faculty members can serve as either a PI or co-PI per round, but not both. Co-PIs must generally meet the same eligibility criteria as primary PIs, except in cases where the co-PI is a postdoctoral researcher. Applicants are limited to applying a maximum of three times within seven years of receiving their PhD.
Research Areas
The program supports research in the following areas:
- Algorithms and optimization
- Applied sciences
- Health research
- Human-computer interaction
- Machine learning
- Machine perception
- Natural language processing
- Networking
- Privacy, safety, and security
- Quantum computing
- Software engineering and programming languages
- Systems
Details on these areas and subtopics can be found on the Google Research website. While the program prioritizes research that aligns with these areas, innovative proposals within these fields may also be considered.
Selection Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated based on the following factors:
- Faculty merit
- Research merit
- Proposal quality
- Adherence to AI ethics principles, including broadening participation
For research topics that require the use of specific products or methodologies, evaluations will also consider how well the proposal utilizes these factors in addition to the overall quality of the approach.
Application Deadline and Submission
Applications must be submitted online by Monday, January 27, 2025, at 11:59:59 PM AoE (UTC-12). Application can be submitted online at the link provided at https://research.google/ (Programs & Events > Faculty Program > Research Scholar Program)
The proposal and CV should be submitted as a single PDF file. Detailed submission guidelines are available on the Google Research website.
Decisions on the proposals will be communicated by June 30, 2025.