BSOE Graduate Student Newsletter
Announcements
Google PhD Fellowship
Please see the Google PhD Fellowship call for nominations (opening Sept. 1). Our internal deadline will be SEPTEMBER 15 to allow time for review.
The fellowship includes:
- Up to 3 year Fellowship
- Full tuition and fees (enrollment fees, health insurance, books) plus a stipend to be used for living expenses, travel and personal equipment
- Google Research Mentor
The fellowship is for the following CS and related areas:
- Algorithms, Optimizations and Markets
- Computational Neuroscience
- Health Research
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Machine Learning
- Machine Perception, Speech Technology and Computer Vision
- Mobile Computing
- Natural Language Processing (including Information Retrieval and Extraction)
- Privacy and Security
- Programming Languages and Software Engineering
- Quantum Computing
- Structured Data and Database Management
- Systems and Networking
Our school can submit up to 4 nominations, but 2 "must self-identify as a woman, Black / African descent, Hispanic / Latino / Latinx, Indigenous, and/or person with a disability". Please specify if the applicant is from one of the self-identifying groups.
For each student nomination, the university will be asked to submit the following material in a single PDF file and we would like this for review of our applicants.
- Cover sheet signed by the Department Chair confirming the student passes eligibility requirements. (See FAQ "What are the eligibility requirements for students?")
- Student CV with links to website and publications (if available)
- Short (1-page) CV of the student's primary advisor
- 2-3 letters of recommendation from those familiar with the nominee's work (at least one from the thesis advisor)
- Research / dissertation proposal including references (maximum 8 pages)
- Student essay response (350-word limit) to: Describe the desired impact your research will make on the field and society, and why this is important to you. Include any personal, educational and/or professional experiences that have motivated your research interests.
- Student essay response (350-word limit) to: Describe an example of your leadership experience in which you have positively influenced others, helped resolve disputes or contributed to group efforts over time. (A leadership role can mean more than just a title. It can mean being a mentor to others, acting as the person in charge of a specific task, or taking the lead role in organizing an event or project. Think about what you accomplished and what you learned from the experience. What were your responsibilities? Did you lead a team? How did your experience change your perspective on leading others? Did you help to resolve an important dispute at your school, church, in your community or an organization? And your leadership role doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to school activities. For example, do you help out or take care of your family?)
- Transcripts of current and previous academic records
Please also include separately in the email a brief abstract (< 1000 words) summarizing the student's research.
Please contact your department's graduate program director or department chair if you are interested in being nominated.
Each department can submit up to 3 nominations for our review.
2020-21 Baskin Fellowship Call
The Jack Baskin School of Engineering is pleased to solicit applications for a one-year Jack Baskin & Peggy Downes Baskin Fellowship. This award is designed to enable an engineering PhD candidate to make swifter progress on their dissertation research by offering one-year fellowship support and in-state tuition remission in the amount of $44,888 (divided among three academic quarters - this works out to be a $8,700 stipend per quarter).
To be eligible for the award, a student must:
- Have completed all PhD coursework (at the time of application).
- Be within normative time and in good academic standing.
DEADLINE to Apply: Monday, September 7, 2020
Apply Here: https://grad.soe.ucsc.
Applicants will submit the following via the link above:
- A 3-4 page extended abstract from the nominee/student describing the students research accomplishments to date and proposed work to be pursued under the fellowship funding during 2020-21. The application should include a detailed plan and quarter-by-quarter timeline for research to be supported by the fellowship.
- A CV/Resume from the nominee/student.
- A letter of support from the faculty adviser evaluating the student’s academic work to date. Note - once the applicant has completed the online application, the faculty advisor will receive an auto-generated message with instructions for submitting their letter of support to the Graduate Advising Office. Faculty advisors will be given an additional week (Sept. 14th) to submit their letters of support.
Applicants (and faculty advisors) will be notified of decisions by Sept. 21st. If you have any questions please direct them to grad-fellowship@soe.ucsc.
eBay's Machine Learning Competition for Students
For the second year, eBay is running a ML Challenge. The prize of the competition is an internship at eBay for the winning student or team.
The announcement attached describes the competition in more detail, but in a nutshell:
The question we invite you to address is how to identify two or more listings as being for the same product by putting them into the same group. We call this Purchase Level Equivalency (PLE). That is, if a buyer purchased two items from two different listings in a single group, they would assess that they had obtained two instances of the same product.
The competition started August 24. It is being hosted on EvalAI.
Please feel free to ask any questions. We have set up a mailbox dedicated to this competition at MLChallenge@ebay.com.
CALL FOR PROPOSAL: HUMAN RIGHTS BY DESIGN FELLOWSHIP
https://citrispolicylab.org/hrbdfellowship/
Taraaz and the CITRIS Policy Lab are pleased to announce the launch of the Human Rights by Design Fellowship Program. Two $1000 fellowships will be provided to University of California graduate students (currently enrolled in Master’s, Ph.D., or J.D. programs at a campus in the University of California system) to carry out projects at the intersection of technology and human rights. During the fellowship program, fellows will work on an original project of their choice and receive feedback and support from the directors of the fellowship program. They will present their completed projects at a virtual event organized by Taraaz and the CITRIS Policy Lab.
Background
Technologies are not neutral. Values, principles, and standards are always built into technological systems. From the first stages of ideation to the last stages of testing and deployment, decisions are made by executives, policymakers, designers, and developers that create both positive and negative effects of technology on society. We believe that human rights, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, should guide decision-making in the design and development of technologies. Therefore, we invite applicants to seek answers to the following question: How can we use the human rights framework as guiding principles in the design and development of technologies?
We welcome proposals that highlight the applicant’s strong commitment to the importance of ethical design in the development of technologies. Other criteria include the clarity and importance of the proposed research project; its concreteness and practicality; and its potential for being applied in industry-wide practices and/or STEM education. The deliverable of the research project may be in several formats, including but not limited to: a white paper, toolkit, video/audio materials, or a series of blog posts.
Eligibility
The fellowship is open to graduate students (from Master’s, Ph.D. or J.D. programs) at any University of California campus with an interest in exploring technology and human rights issues and experience in adjacent fields such as:
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- Human Computer Interaction (HCI) focusing on Human-Centered Design, Value Sensitive Design, Participatory Design.
- Computer and Information Science
- Technology Law and Policy
- Science and Technology Studies
- Ethical Design and Development of Artificial Intelligence systems
Application Requirements
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- A one-page project proposal addressing the following:
- The proposed nature of the project and its anticipated impacts. This should include mention of your project’s deliverable(s).
- How your project contributes to the development of the concept of human rights by design.
- Proposed methodology to carry out the project (successful applicants will work with the fellowship’s directors to build out the methodology further).
- An up-to-date Curriculum Vitae (CV).
- Two work samples: one to highlight your academic research, and another to show your ability to translate your academic research into a more public-facing output.
- A one-page project proposal addressing the following:
Finalists will be contacted to set up an interview and present their proposal (10 to 15 minutes) to the selection committee followed by a Q&A (20 to 30 minutes.)
Please send you application documents to rpakzad@taraazresearch.org and nonnecke@berkeley.edu with a subject line: [Applicant Name] Human Rights By Design Fellowship.
Fellowship Timeline
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- Call for proposal deadline: September 30th, 2020
- Notification to finalists to set up an interview: October 15th
- Final decision made by: November 10th
- Fellowship duration: January 1st, 2021 until July 1st, 2021
- End of fellowship event: Mid-July 2021
About Us
Taraaz is a research and advocacy organization working at the intersection of Technology and Human Rights. We research human rights implications of digital technologies and turn our human rights-based research into practical tools, guidelines, and policy proposals to better inform technologists and other public and private entities in the design, development, and deployment of digital products and services.
The CITRIS Policy Lab supports interdisciplinary research, education, and thought leadership to address core questions regarding the role of formal and informal regulation in promoting innovation and amplifying its positive effects on society. The CITRIS Policy Lab is housed within CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, a four-campus institute operating on the campuses of UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced, and UC Santa Cruz. With over 400 faculty affiliates, CITRIS is an internationally recognized leader in research and development of information technology to address society’s most pressing challenges.
Relevant Work
The following resources may be helpful for applicants:
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- Aizenberg, E., & Hoven, J. V. (2020). Designing for human rights in AI. Big Data & Society, 7(2), 205395172094956. doi:10.1177/2053951720949566. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2053951720949566#articleCitationDownloadContainer
- Chung, A., Jen, D., McNealy, J. and Nguyen, S., 2020. From Legislation To Implementation: Exploring How To Prototype Privacy Bills Through. https://medium.com/mit-media-lab/from-legislation-to-implementation-exploring-how-to-prototype-privacy-bills-through-human-centered-4336af75f960
- Costanza-Chock, Sasha. Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. MIT Press, 2020. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-justice
- Friedman, Batya, and David G. Hendry. Value sensitive design: Shaping technology with moral imagination. MIT Press, 2019. https://www.vsdesign.org/
- “Guiding Principles on Businesses and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework.” 2011. United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. https://www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/guidingprinciplesbusinesshr_en.pdf
- Participatory Approaches to Machine Learning ICML 2020 Workshop: https://participatoryml.github.io/
- Yeung, Karen, Andrew Howes, and Ganna Pogrebna. “AI Governance by Human Rights-Centred Design, Deliberation and Oversight: An End to Ethics Washing.” The Oxford Handbook of AI Ethics, Oxford University Press, 2019. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190067397.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190067397-e-5
Call for GSI Applications for STAT 266C (Spring 2021) -- Due 9/13
Reminder that we are seeking applications to GSI for STAT 266C this Spring 2021.
CROSS Call for Proposals
The Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) is seeking proposals for new research projects to be reviewed at the Fall 2020 CROSS Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) meeting.
Proposals are due on September 14. If your proposal is shortlisted, you will be invited to make a 10-15 minute presentation to the CROSS IAB and Advisory Committee on October 5.
The full Call for Proposals is available on the CROSS website at https://cross.ucsc.edu/projects/projectproposal.html and gives more details about how to apply, the criteria for selection, and a list of suggested topics.
UCSC faculty and PhD students who will have completed their class work by the end of Fall 2020 are encouraged to propose research projects. Funding for selected research projects cover the costs for one graduate student researcher (GSR) position. Research projects should raise a fundamental research question and open a plausible path to open source software that would be widely adopted.Recent PhD graduates from any university are welcome to propose incubator projects. Selected incubator projects fund one post-doc position. The proposal should show strong evidence that the open-source software project would meet with great interest by at least one well-established open-source software community.
Contact Stephanie Lieggi (slieggi@ucsc.edu) if you have any questions about this Call or the submission process.
*PLEASE NOTE THE UPCOMING UNIVERSITY DEADLINES*
Please note the following upcoming university deadlines, and ALWAYS check the Academic and Administrative Calendar for important dates and deadlines. Bookmark this year's Academic and Administrative Calendar and refer to it regularly.
Friday, October 9th Graduate Student Enrollment & Fee Payment
If you have not paid your registration fees or enrolled in the minimum number of courses by this date, you will be charged a $50 late fee. Please keep in mind that pending aid (Fellowship, GSR, TA) will not credit your account until you are enrolled in at least 5 units.
Friday, October 9th Graduate Student Part-Time Status
This is the deadline to apply for reduced course load and fees. Part-time status forms must be approved/signed by your faculty advisor and submitted to the BSOE Graduate Advising office by the posted deadline. Part-time application forms are available on the Graduate Division's website.
Thursday, October 15th Deadline To Apply For Degree
If you plan to complete your MS or PhD this quarter (Fall 2020), the degree application needs to be submitted to BSOE Graduate Advising office. This is also the deadline to pay for filing fee, if applicable. More guidelines for graduating are available on the Graduate Advising website.
Wednesday, October 21st Deadline to Add/Drop/Swap Courses
This is your last day to add, drop and swap courses. You will not be able to drop or withdraw from courses after this deadline has passed. If you are enrolled in a placeholder class, you MUST drop it by this deadline. More information on how to add, drop, and swap classes is available on the registrar website.
Wednesday, October 21st Grade Option
This is your last day to change your grading option for any courses you are enrolled in.
IMPORTANT: The system defaults to Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grading. Instructions for how to change your grading option to letter grades (ABC) can be found here.
Thursday, November 12th Late Add with Fee Deadline
The Add by Petition form requires the signatures of both the instructor and the department adviser and needs to be submitted to the Office of the Registrar.