Yahoo! was looking for "outstanding graduate-student researchers with the potential to become thought leaders in their fields."
The search was part of the company's inaugural Key Scientific Challenges program. Each recipient would receive $5,000 in unrestricted seed funding for their research, exclusive access to certain Yahoo! data sets, and the opportunity to collaborate directly with Yahoo! scientists. Of the 20 students ultimately selected, four came from Carnegie Mellon University, the most winners from any university. Stanford, with three winners, had the second most.
The students recognized from Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science are Pinar Donmez and Jaime Arguello of the Language Technologies Institute and Polo Chau and Yi Zhang of the Machine Learning Department.
"We clearly were impressed by the quality of the applicants from Carnegie Mellon and believe Pinar, Yi, Jaime, and Polo each hold great potential for making significant contributions as researchers," notes, Yahoo! Director of Academic Relations Ken Schmidt (E'71,'73).
—Chris A. Weber
