Han Liu, a PhD student in the Machine Learning Department (MLD), is the recipient of a Google Fellowship in Statistics, one of 13 Google Fellowships awarded for the first time this year.

Liu, who is pursuing a joint doctorate in machine learning and statistics, is advised by John Lafferty of MLD and Larry Wasserman in the Department of Statistics. He received a master's degree in computer science at the University of Toronto in 2005 and a master's degree in machine learning and statistics at Carnegie Mellon in 2007.

The main theme of his research is nonparametric inference for high-dimensional massive datasets and its applications for high-dimensional nonparametric regression, classification, density estimation, structural learning, and simultaneous hypothesis testing.

"Google is pleased to announce the recipients of the inaugural Google Fellowships," said a statement released by the company. "These awards have been presented to exemplary PhD students in computer science or related research areas. We have given these students unique fellowships to acknowledge their contributions to their areas of specialty and provide funding for their education and research. We look forward to working closely with them as they continue to become leaders in their respective fields."

Each Fellow receives a cash award to cover tuition, research, conference attendance and a personal computer, an Android phone and service, a Google mentor, an invitation to attend the Google Fellowship Forum, and the opportunity to apply for a paid summer internship.

In addition to statistics, fellowships were awarded in the following specialty areas: cloud computing, computer networking, machine learning, image interpretation, human-computer interaction, fault tolerant computing, distributed systems, social computing, natural language processing, object recognition, market algorithms, and compiler technology.

In other Google news, YoungJoo Jeong, a senior in the Computer Science Department and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, is a winner of a 2009 Google Anita Borg Scholarship and Shilpa Arora, a PhD student in the Language Technologies Institute, was a finalist.

Google Anita Borg Scholarship recipients each receive a $10,000 award for the 2009-2010 academic year; finalists each receive a $1,000 award. All scholarship recipients and finalists will be invited to attend the Annual Google Scholars' Retreat in Mountain View, Calif., on June 25-27, 2009.

Also, Derek Hoiem, who earned his PhD in robotics in 2007 and is now an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, shared honorable mention for the 2008 Association for Computing Machinery Doctoral Dissertation Award. He will share a $10,000 prize provided by Google.