Microsoft Research Fellowship
Region: Global
Collaborating across disciplines to explore, innovate, and shape the future.
2026 Microsoft Research Fellows & Fellowship Advisors
AI for global and societal impact
Equitable interactive AI tools for creatives
Melisa Achoko Allela
Fellow
Creative Technologist/Senior Lecturer, LESO Stories, Namibia University of Science and Technology, Namibia
Microsoft Research lead(s): Cecily Morrison, Katja Hofmann, Nancy Baym
Global employment, hiring, and performance outcomes based on AI adoption
Namrata Kala
Fellow
Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Eleanor Dillon, Lindsey Raymond & Eric Horvitz
Grounding AI in global majority languages, cultures, and contexts
Junjie Hu
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
Binwei Yao
Fellow
PhD Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States
Muhammad Abdel‑Mageed
Fellowship Advisor
Associate Professor, The University of British Columbia, Canada
Sangyun Kwan
Fellow
PhD Student, The University of British Columbia, Canada
Aditya Vashistha
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, Cornell University, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Jacki O’Neill, Tanuja Ganu, Xing Xie & Ogbemi Ekwejunor-Etchie
Tackling disinformation and misinformation through the design, implementation and evaluation of provenance tools for end users
David Rand
Fellowship Advisor
Professor, Cornell University, United States
Gabrielle Peloquin-Skulski
Fellow
PhD Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Dilrukshi Gamage
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, University of Colombo School of Computing, Sri Lanka
Microsoft Research lead(s): Abi Sellen & Eric Horvitz
AI fundamentals: scalable reasoning, model adaption and evaluation
Advancing generative AI evaluation through psychometrics and measurement
Sanmi Koyejo
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, Stanford University, United States
Sang Truong
Fellow
PhD Student, Stanford University, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Hanna Wallach, Xiaoyuan Yi, Miro Dudik, & Xing Xie
Efficient and accurate post-training of retrieval models
Ravisri Valluri
Fellow
PhD Student, University of California, Los Angeles, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Gaurav Sinha, Arun Iyer, Sonu Mehta, Kiran Shiragur & Shivam Garg
Steering reasoning models with test-time verification
Hongxiang Fan
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, Imperial College London
Hao (Mark) Chen
Fellow
PhD Student, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
Microsoft Research lead(s): Amit Sharma, Nagarajan Natarajan, Niranjani Prasad & Sushrut Karmalkar
Biological and scientific modeling
Generative models for regulatory genomics
Sascha Duttke
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, Washington State University, United States
Saiman Dahal
Fellow
PhD Student, Washington State University, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Alex Lu, Kevin Yang & Lorin Crawford
Foundational systems & infrastructure for AI
AI for clean electricity planning and deployment
Maurizio Porfiri
Fellowship Advisor
Professor, New York University, United States
Camilla Ancona
Fellow
Postdoc, New York University, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Karin Strauss, Kate Lytvynets, Bichlien Nguyen, Jake Smith & Danrong Zhang
Systems, Algorithms, and Rigorous Applications of Reinforcement Learning Post-Training
Xinyu Lian
Fellow
PhD Student, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Hitesh Ballani, Madan Musuvathi, Aashaka Shah, Anand Bonde, Ishai Menache, Konstantina Mellou, Marco Molinaro, Nikhil Swamy, Roshan Dathathri, Saikat Chakraborty, Sarah Fakhoury, Shraddha Barke & Sirui Li
Human-AI collaboration and interaction
AI Models and Creativity
Martin Disley
Fellow
PhD Student, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Microsoft Research lead(s): Shannon Monroe, Matt Corwine, Richard Banks, Sean Rintel & Neeltje Berger
AI-powered Collaborative Dynamic Experiences
Yining (Rima) Cao
Fellow
PhD Student, University of California San Diego, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Siân Lindley, Nathalie Richie & Jack Williams
Beyond Assistance: AI as teammate for collaboration, alignment, and collective intelligence
Daniel Fried
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, United States
Saujas Vaduguru
Fellow
PhD Student, Carnegie Mellon University, United States
Alan Ritter
Fellowship Advisor
Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States
Ethan Mendes
Fellow
PhD Student, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Jennifer Neville, Sid Suri, Kori Inkpen & Siân Lindley
Toward socially intelligent AI agents
Xuhui Zhou
Fellow
PhD Student, Carnegie Mellon University, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Jianxun Lian, Dongsheng Li, Xing Xie, Baining Guo & Beibei Shi
Multimodal & Embodied Intelligence
Beyond tokenization: foundational approaches to multimodal LLMs
Paul Liang
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Chanakya Ekbote
Fellow
PhD Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Vineeth N B, Tanuja Ganu, Mercy Ranjit, Neeraj Kayal & Ogbemi Ekwejunor-Etchie
General-purpose robotic foundation models for embodied AI
Jiajun Wu
Fellowship Advisor
Assistant Professor, Stanford University, United States
Ziwei Liu
Fellowship Advisor
Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Ziqi Huang
Fellow
PhD Student, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Microsoft Research lead(s): Jiaolong Yang, Li Zhao, Lily Sun, Jianfeng Gao & Baining Guo
Robot learning from alternative data sources
Rao Fu
Fellow
PhD Student, Brown University, United States
Microsoft Research lead(s): Michael Murray, Tess Hellebrekers & Reuben Tan