Today Microsoft Research announced five recipients of its New Faculty Fellowship program. Today it's particularly difficult for junior faculty to get funding because the competition is so still for the limited (and shrinking) funding out there, and because it gets a little easier once you've established your reputation through a track record of results and publication. But that takes funding, and so we have a wonderful vicious circle. So the MSR fellowship award is meant to identify five of the most promising junior faculty working in computer science, andgive them some "breathing room" over the next two years to get well established, take some risks, and make some serious progress on their research. It's $100,000 a year for two years.
We put out a broad call for nominations for outstanding faculty who have less than 5 years as a faculty member. A school could only nominate one person. We got a total of 110 submissions, all of them simply outstanding. We went through several iterations with a review committee that included MSR staff and senior faculty from academia, and in the end chose these five. I had the privilege of being on the panel that did face-to-face interviews with the final 10 candidates, and they all just blew us away with their talent, enthusiasm, and amazing accomplishments in such a short period of time. It was excruciatingly difficult to narrow the field down.
Here's a longer article that gives some more information on the winners and their area of research.
Congratulations to all five recipients. You absolutely deserve it.
7:34:20 PM 
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