{"id":136,"date":"2025-07-11T01:28:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T01:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T01:28:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T01:28:06","slug":"cs-professors-mendis-and-zhang-receive-google-junior-faculty-awards-siebel-school-of-computing-and-data-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/136\/","title":{"rendered":"CS professors Mendis and Zhang receive Google Junior Faculty Awards | Siebel School of Computing and Data Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google has inaugurated the<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.google\/products\/google-cloud\/ml-systems-junior-faculty-awards\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award<\/a>, and CS professors <a href=\"https:\/\/siebelschool.illinois.edu\/about\/people\/all-faculty\/charithm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Charith Mendis<\/a> and <a aria-label=\"Minjia Zhang\u00a0; Link opens in new tab\" href=\"https:\/\/siebelschool.illinois.edu\/about\/people\/faculty\/minjiaz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Minjia Zhang<\/a> have each received awards. Google created the nomination-based award to recognize the significance and promise of the work being undertaken by young faculty members.\u00a0Mendis was noted for his research\u00a0in ML Compiler Optimization, while Zhang has been awarded for his work in Highly Efficient ML Systems.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/viewphoto.aspx\" alt=\"Photo of Charith Mendis and Minjia Zhang\" width=\"250\" data-fancy-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Charith Mendis and Minjia Zhang&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Photo Credit: &lt;em&gt;Holly Birch Photography&lt;\/em&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: Holly Birch Photography<\/p>\n<p>Charith Mendis and Minjia Zhang<\/p>\n<p>A group of Google engineers and researchers selected more than 50 recipients from 27 U.S. universities. The award includes $100,000 in unrestricted gift funding to support future research and an invitation to participate in a symposium with fellow award winners.<\/p>\n<p>Zhang says, &#8220;I\u2019m definitely thrilled and deeply honored to receive this award. It is a recognition of our work by leaders in both ML and system research at Google. I\u2019m also excited about the potential collaboration this opens up.&#8221; Describing his research, he says that\u00a0 &#8220;The award supports my lab\u2019s research on building highly efficient ML systems in both data centers and scientific supercomputers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Amin Vahdat, Google VP\/GM, ML, Systems &amp; Cloud AI, wrote that \u201cWe are very excited to see the breakthroughs the next generation of faculty will deliver in the years ahead. We know they will help invent the future and mentor the next generation of talented students, many of whom will become faculty members on their own, start new companies or populate startups and large companies alike.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grainger Engineering Affiliations<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/siebelschool.illinois.edu\/about\/people\/all-faculty\/charithm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Charith Mendis<\/a> is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.<\/p>\n<p><a aria-label=\"Minjia Zhang\u00a0; Link opens in new tab\" href=\"https:\/\/siebelschool.illinois.edu\/about\/people\/faculty\/minjiaz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Minjia Zhang<\/a>\u00a0 is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of computer science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google has inaugurated the ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award, and CS professors Charith Mendis and Minjia Zhang&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[191,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}