Computer Science Department Ph.D. students Daehyeok Kim and Katherine Ye are among 10 students nationwide who have been awarded two-year Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowships for 2019.

"These are the best Ph.D. students in North America," Neel Joshi, a senior researcher at Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Wash., and chair of the Microsoft Research Ph.D. Fellowship, said in a blog post announcing the winners. "They are incredibly talented and it is really an honor to support them at this important and exciting stage of their careers."

Kim is a third-year Ph.D. student, advised by Srinivasan Seshan and Vyas Sekar. His research interests lie in the intersection of systems and networking. His current focus is on making data centers faster and more efficient by designing novel network primitives with advanced networking hardware such as programmable switches and remote direct memory access network interface controllers (RDMA NICs). He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea.

Ye, also a third-year Ph.D. student, is advised by Keenan Crane and Jonathan Aldrich. Her work focuses on information visualization and on creating personal tools that use computational techniques for modeling, search and synthesis to augment the human ability to think and create. She leads the CMU team that is building Penrose, a platform that enables people to create beautiful diagrams just by typing mathematical notation in plain text. She earned a bachelor's degree in computer science at Princeton University.

The fellowships provide tuition and fees for two consecutive years and include a $42,000 annual stipend to help with living and travel expenses. Applicants are nominated by their university.