Profs. Linran Fan and Aryan Mokhtari have been named recipients of 2024 Google Research Scholar Program Awards. 

The Research Scholar Program aims to support early-career professors who are pursuing research in fields relevant to Google. The program provides unrestricted gifts to support research at institutions around the world, and is focused on funding world-class research conducted by early-career professors.

Linran Fan was selected in the area of Quantum Computing for his work on "Coherent superconducting-photonic transducers for scalable quantum computing networks."

Aryan Mokhtari was selected in the area of Machine Learning and Data Mining for his work on "Representation Learning and Fine-tuning of Large Models in Federated Environments"

Linran Fan is an assistant professor in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests focus on nonlinear interactions between optical photons, superconducting circuits, electron spins, and acoustic waves at the quantum level in a hybrid system of novel integrated devices and materials. Target applications include photonic information processing, communication, and precision measurement enhanced by quantum information science.

Aryan Mokhtari is an assistant professor and Fellow of the Jack Kilby/Texas Instruments Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Computer Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include the areas of optimization, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. His current research focuses on the theory and applications of convex and non-convex optimization in large-scale machine learning and data science problems. He has received a number of awards and fellowships, including Penn’s Joseph and Rosaline Wolf Award for Best Doctoral Dissertation in electrical and systems engineering and the Simons-Berkeley Fellowship.