{"id":575155,"date":"2025-10-30T13:17:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T17:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/ece\/?post_type=news&p=575155"},"modified":"2025-10-30T13:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T17:25:15","slug":"johns-hopkins-selected-for-new-amazon-ai-phd-fellowship-program","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/ece\/news\/johns-hopkins-selected-for-new-amazon-ai-phd-fellowship-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Johns Hopkins Selected for New Amazon AI PhD Fellowship program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johns Hopkins University is one of nine universities selected by Amazon for its new AI PhD Fellowship program<\/a>, an initiative that will provide nearly $68 million in funding over two years to more than 100 doctoral students nationwide.<\/p>\n

In its inaugural year, the program will support seven Whiting School of Engineering<\/a> doctoral students studying core AI topics in areas including machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. Additionally, three new Amazon-funded Whiting School fellows were announced through the JHU + Amazon Initiative for Interactive AI (AI2AI)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The AI PhD Fellows<\/a>, chosen based on their proposals for research projects that have the potential for significant societal impact, receive tuition, a stipend, fees, a travel grant, and mentorship from Amazon scientists, along with Amazon Web Services cloud-computing credits to support their computational research.<\/p>\n

Each fellow is matched with an Amazon research liaison\u2014a senior scientist whose expertise aligns with their work. This mentorship is essential to the program\u2019s success, according to Whiting School Dean Ed Schlesinger<\/a>. \u201cThe funding will enable our students to explore topics that are at the cutting edge of their areas of inquiry, but it is through mentorship that they\u2019ll learn how to transform their groundbreaking ideas into deployable systems that can enhance people\u2019s lives,\u201d Schlesinger says.<\/p>\n

Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist in Amazon\u2019s Artificial General Intelligence views collaborating with the some of the brightest PhD students at the nation\u2019s leading research universities as big win for Amazon. \u201cWhat makes this program special is how it brings together Amazon\u2019s real-world experience across diverse industries with the fresh perspectives of these top researchers to cultivate the next generation of AI leaders,\u201d Prasad says.<\/p>\n

The first cohort of JHU fellows comes from five engineering departments, and their project span areas from data-driven materials discovery for clean energy to enabling large language models to navigate the complexities of diverse cultural, and ethical contexts.<\/p>\n

Computer science<\/a> student Chuanyang Jin aims to develop AI systems with advanced social intelligence that can learn and coexist with humans, noting, \u201cSocial intelligence isn\u2019t just a theoretical ideal in cognitive science\u2014it is a practical necessity. These capabilities are essential for AI systems to operate safely and productively alongside people in ever-changing contexts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yang Zhao, a civil and systems engineering<\/a> student is inspired by how the rapid spread of technology boosted productivity and improved people\u2019s lives in Gansu\u2014the county in China where he grew up. His Amazon-supported research explores the potential of foundation models to enable economic growth and improve people\u2019s safety and quality of life. \u201cMy objective is to enhance the efficiency, trustworthiness, and interpretability of foundation models for domain-specific tasks in areas such as transportation and public health,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The other Johns Hopkins AI PhD Fellows<\/a> and their areas of research are:<\/p>\n