Google University Research Awards

Google's mission: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

At Google, we are committed to develop new technologies to help our users find and use information. While we do significant in-house research and engineering, we also maintain strong ties with academic institutions worldwide pursuing innovative research in core areas relevant to our mission. As part of that vision, the Google Research Awards program aims to identify and support world-class, full-time faculty pursuing research in areas of mutual interest.

What are Google Research Awards?

The purpose of this program is to facilitate more interaction between Google and academia and also nurture stronger relations and partnerships with universities. The intent of the awards is to support academic research aimed at improving information access (defined broadly). Awards through this program are typically for one year in the range from $10K-$150K. Areas that are of particular interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Economics and market algorithms
  • Education innovation
  • Geo/maps
  • Health
  • Information retrieval, extraction, and organization
  • Machine learning and data mining
  • Machine translation
  • Mobile
  • Multi-media search and audio/video processing
  • Natural language processing
  • Policy and standards
  • Security and privacy
  • Social systems
  • Speech
  • Structured data and database management
  • Software and hardware systems infrastructure
  • Human-computer interaction

Participants in the awards program are expected to have a primary contact at Google through whom they can discuss research directions, provide progress updates, engage in knowledge transfer, etc. Google maintains an academic environment that we would like to share with our award recipients, so we invite them to visit our facilities, to give talks related to their work, and to engage in discussions with our research groups. By sharing new ideas and key insights, we hope that both Google and award recipients will find mutual benefits. After the research is completed, we sometimes invite award recipients for more visits to further discuss their work.

Applying for Google Research Awards

To initiate the process of applying for a Google research award, faculty members should use the following general guidelines for proposal submission to research-awards@google.com.

  • Eligibility: Full-time faculty members from universities worldwide may submit proposals describing the research they wish to pursue.
  • Tentative deadlines: April 15th, August 15th, and December 15th of each year.
  • Format: 3-page proposals in PDF format must include the following items/sections:
    1. Proposal Title
    2. Principal Investigator (PI) full name, contact information (postal address, e-Mail, phone), affiliation (University, School, College and/or Department)
    3. Research Abstract and Goals
    4. One or two keywords from the research areas listed above that best captures the principal focus of proposed research
    5. Technical description
    6. Expected outcomes and results
    7. Budget section, usually to support one or two graduate students for one academic year.
    8. Google contacts, if any
  • Please also include a current short CV from the PI
  • Proposals must have a Google technical sponsor, who will act as a liaison
  • Proposals are reviewed three times per year by engineering/research teams to make recommendations for funding.

Our aim is to keep the proposal submission process simple enough so that investigators can be supported without the burden of excessive formalities. We think your time is best spent on research, not on paperwork!

Interested in finding out more?

If you have any questions about the Google Research Awards program, please contact us at research-awards@google.com.

Information about Google research

If you'd like to find out more about some the research done in the past by Google's technical staff, you can visit the Google Research Site. Among other things you will find a list of papers and books by Googlers on a wide range of topics.

 


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