Chronicle Article By Bill Steele:
Zhiming Shen, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Computer Science, has
received a 2015 IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award to support his graduate studies.
Students are accepted for the highly competitive awards based on their overall
potential for research excellence, the degree to which their technical interests
align with those of IBM, and their academic progress.
“My research interest is in cloud computing, which aligns with IBM's future
strategy: they attach great importance to the cloud market,” Shen said. “I think
all these factors played an important role while they were making the decision
to give me the award.”
Shen works with Hakim Weatherspoon, assistant professor of computer science, and
computer science principal researcher Robbert van Renesse on methods to make
cloud computing faster and more secure. Van Renesse nominated him for the
fellowship.
The award provides a one-year stipend covering tuition and fees with additional
research funding, and may be renewed each year for up to three years. Fellows
are matched with an IBM mentor according to their technical interests, and are
strongly encouraged to participate in at least one internship at IBM while
completing their studies. Shen has done a previous internship with IBM Research,
doing work that resulted in a patent for a system to eliminate duplication in
cloud storage by merging duplicate blocks while preserving data that may exist
in only one of two versions. For his next internship, he plans to spend a summer
working with IBM Cloud.
Shen and his Cornell advisers collaborate frequently with a research group at
IBM Watson Research Center headed by Hani Jamjoom, M.Eng. '97 and including Dan
Wiliams Ph.D. ‘13.