ARC and ACO support competitive research fellowships, with projects put forth by graduate students.
Call for Proposals for Spring 2026
We are happy to announce the call for applications for Spring 2026 ARC-ACO student fellowships.
All Georgia Tech PhD students are welcome to apply. These one-semester RA fellowships will be funded half by ARC, ACO and half by the student’s advisor. Projects that align with ARC and/or ACO objectives will be considered. Previous winners of ARC-ACO fellowships are welcome to apply, but priority may be given to students who have not won before.
Spring 2026 Applications: due by Sunday, October 19, 2025 at 11:59pm EST.
The main component of an application is a 2-page research proposal, details below.
Application Instructions
1.Fill out the short online application form, including uploading your 2-page project description and CV: Application Form
2. Ask your advisor (or project mentor) to send a brief email supporting the project and your application to wperkins3@gatech.edu. This email should not be a letter of recommendation but rather 1) confirm the advisor has read the proposal and supports it 2) confirms the advisor will provide half the funding of the RA in the event the student wins the fellowship.
Project description instructions
- 2 page maximum (excluding references).
- Include a focused research problem (including a precise statement of the problem).
- Discuss the general context of the research, including its importance and significance for non-experts.
- Discuss relevant related/previous work, and include a brief mention of related previous work by the applicant.
- Students are strongly encouraged to have their advisor(s) review the proposal before submitting it.
Research topics in the broad areas of algorithms, randomness and complexity are suitable and could range from purely theoretical investigations to system building based on new algorithmic ideas. Projects could be based on collaborative efforts between two or more groups/faculty members.
See here for sample applications from the Spring 2016 ARC fellowship awardees.
Past Fellowship Awards
| Student(s) | Semester Awarded | Fellowship Title | Advisor(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ruben Ascoli (ACO Math) | 2025 Spring | Properties of the Weak Saturation Number of Graphs | Xiaoyu He (Math) |
| Max Dabagia (ACO CS) | 2025 Spring | Computational Roles of Spike-Timing Dependent Plasticity for Assemblies of Neurons | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Jieqi Di (ISYE) | 2025 Spring | Optimal Pricing With Impatient Customers | Sigrun Andradottir, Hayriye Ayhan (ISYE) |
| Aiya Kuchukova (ACO Math) | 2025 Spring | Sampling Fixed-Size Colorings | Will Perkins (CS) |
| Kuo-Wei Lai (ECE) | 2025 Spring | Characterization of the Implicit Bias of ReLU Networks in the Overparameterized Regime | Vidya Muthukumar (ISYE) |
| Mengqi Lou (ACO ISYE) | 2025 Spring | Computationally Efficient Reductions from a Gaussian Location Model with Applications to Statistical-Computational Gaps | Ashwin Pananjady (ISYE) |
| Kalen Patton (ACO Math) | 2025 Spring | Prophet Inequalities and Auctions with Dependencies | Sahil Singla (CS) |
| Diptangshu Sen (ISYE) | 2025 Spring | The Price of Differential Privacy in Congestion Games | Juba Ziani (ISYE) |
| Abhishek Dhawan (ACO Math) | 2024 Spring | Edge Coloring with Small Palettes | Anton Bernshteyn, Cheng Mao (Math) |
| Bo Yuan (ML AE) | 2024 Spring | Toward Adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo Sampling | Yongxin Chen (AE) |
| Jingye Xu (ACO ISYE) | 2024 Spring | Copositive Dual and Sensitivity Analysis of 0-1 MBQP | Santanu Dey, Diego Cifuentes (ISYE) |
| Yifan Wang (CS) | 2024 Spring | Learning Stochastic Problems with Limited Feedback | Sahil Singla (CS) |
| Neelkamal Bhuyan (ML ISYE) | 2024 Spring | Stochastic Convex Function Chasing with Adversarial Guarantees | Debankur Mukherjee (ISYE) |
| Manuel Fernandez (ACO Math) | 2024 Spring | Improving the Mixing Time of Coordinate Hit and Run | Galyna Lyvshyts (Math) |
| Hoang Huy Nguyen (ACO ISYE) | 2024 Spring | Mixing Time of Queuing Systems: An Interplay Between Lyapunov Drift and Poincare Inequality | Siva Theja Maguluri (ISYE) |
| Mirabel Reid (CS) | 2024 Spring | Lognormal distributions in Hebbian Learning | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Guanghui Wang (ML CS) | 2023 Spring | Adaptive and Oracle-Efficient Online Learning | Vidya Muthukumar (ISyE) and Jacob Abernathy (CS) |
| Tian-Yi Zhou (ISyE OR) | 2023 Spring | Classification of Unbounded Data by Gaussian Mixture Models Using deep ReLU Networks | Xiaoming Huo (ISyE) |
| Jai Moondra (ACO CS) | 2023 Spring | Fair and interpretable combinatorial optimization using symmetric weights | Swati Gupta (ISyE) and Mohit Singh (ISyE) |
| Yumbum Kook (CS) | 2023 Spring | Further Development of High-dimensional Sampling | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Yuzhou Wang (ACO Math) | 2023 Spring | Hardness of finding balanced independent sets in d-regular random bipartite graphs | Will Perkins (CS) |
| Yongchun Li (OR ISyE) | 2023 Spring | On the Strength of Dantzig-Wolfe Relaxation of Rank Constrained Optimization: Exactness, Rank Bound, and Algorithm | Weijun Xie (ISyE) |
| Sajad Khodadadian (OR ISyE) | 2023 Spring | Sharp Analysis of Two-Time-Scale Stochastic Approximation with Applications in Reinforcement Learning | Siva Theja Maguluri (ISyE) |
| Kevin Shu (ACO Math) | 2023 Spring | Sparsity and Randomness in Optimization | Greg Blekherman (Math) |
| Xinyuan Cao (ML CS) | 2023 Spring | Unsupervised Learning of Halfspaces and Beyond | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Qunzhi Xu (OR) | 2022 Spring | Active Sequential Change-Point Detection Under Sampling Control | Yajun Mei (ISyE) |
| Adam Brown (Math ACO) | 2022 Spring | Diverse Subset Selection | Mohit Singh (ISyE) |
| Jing Yu (ACO) | 2022 Spring | Fast Distributed Algorithm Conjecture for Lovasz Local Lemma | Anton Bernshteyn (Math) |
| Mirabel Reid (CS) | 2022 Spring | Graph Parameterization in the Assembly Model | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Mehrdad Ghadiri (CS ACO) | 2022 Spring | Tall p-norm Regression in Input Sparsity Time | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Shen Zhang (ML) | 2022 Spring | Toward optimal multi-agent reinforcement learning: From consensus to policy evaluation | Justin Romberg (ECE), Ashwin Pananjady (ISyE/ECE) |
| Yiling Luo (OR) | 2022 Spring | Towards Understanding Statistical Properties of Model Parameters in Stochastic First Order Optimization Algorithms | Xiaoming Huo (ISyE) |
| Hassan Mortagy (ISyE) | 2021 Spring | First-Order Methods for Combinatorial Structures and Machine Learning | Swati Gupta (Spring 2021) |
| Daan Rutten (ISyE) | 2021 Spring | Improving Capacity Scaling With Machine Learning Predictions | Debankur Mukherjee (ISyE) |
| Zhanzhan Zhao (CS) | 2021 Spring | Mitigating Residential Segregation Through Urban Infrastructure | Dana Randall (CS) |
| atharth Dubey (ISyE) | 2021 Spring | On the Success of Strong Branching | Santanu Dey (ISyE) |
| He Jia (CS) | 2021 Spring | Robustly Learning of Mixtures of Gaussians | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Zaiwei Chen (ML) | 2021 Spring | Unified Framework for Finite-Sample Analysis of Reinforcement Learning Algorithms | Siva Theja Maguluri (ISyE) |
| Aditi Laddha (ACO CS) | 2020 Spring | Better Approximation for Uniform Sparsest Cut | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| Timothy Duff (ACO Math) | 2020 Spring | Challenges in Computational Algebraic Vision | Anton Leykin (Math) |
| Liyan Xie (ISyE) | 2020 Spring | Distributionally Robust Nonparametric Hypothesis Testing. | Yao Xie (ISyE) |
| Andrew McRae (ECE) | 2020 Spring | Exploiting low-dimensional manifold structure with kernel methods. | Mark Davenport (ECE) |
| Jiaming Liang (ISyE) | 2020 Spring | First-Order Methods for Nonconvex Smooth Composite Optimization Problems | Renato Monteiro (ISyE) |
| Yujie Zhao (ISyE) | 2020 Spring | Homotopic Methods can Significantly Speed up the Computation of the Non-differential Optimization Problems. | Xiaoming Huo (ISyE) |
| Yuliia Lut (ISyE) | 2020 Spring | Improving accuracy for dynamic differential privacy with change-point detection. | Rachel Cummings (ISyE) |
| Haoming Jiang (ML ISyE) | 2020 Spring | Nonparametric Regression on Low Dimensional Manifolds using Neural Networks. | Tuo Zhao (ISyE) |
| Mohamed El Tonbari (OR, ISyE) | 2020 Spring | On Two-Stage Distributionally Robust Optimization with Binary Variables. | George Nemhauser(ISyE) and Alejandro Toriello (ISyE) |
| Shengding Sun (ACO Math) | 2020 Spring | Sparse positive semidefinite relaxations with S^{n,k}. | Greg Blekherman (Math) and Santanu Dey (ISyE) |
| Zongchen Chen (ACO, CS) | 2019 Spring | Distribution Testing for Markov Random Fields | Eric Vigoda (CS) |
| Sebastian Perez-Salazar (ACO, ISyE) | 2019 Spring | Dynamic allocation in the Cloud with Near-Optimal Efficiency | Mohit Singh (ISyE) and Alejandro Toriello (ISyE) |
| Minshuo Chen (ML, ISyE) | 2019 Spring | On Nonconvex Stochastic Optimization of Residual Networks | Tuo Zhao (ISyE) |
| Wanrong Zhang (IE, ISyE) | 2019 Spring | Online Monitoring Streaming Data Under Privacy or Resources Constraints | Yajun Mei (ISyE) and Rachel Cummings (ISyE) |
| Tianyi Liu (OR, ISyE) | 2019 Spring | Online Risk Quantification of Input Uncertainty | Enlu Zhou (ISyE) |
| Youngho Yoo (ACO, Math) | 2019 Spring | Packing zero A-paths in undirected group labelled graphs | Robin Thomas (Math) |
| Daniela Hurtado Lange (OR, ISyE) | 2019 Spring | Performance analysis of scheduling algorithms in a switch | Siva Theja Maguluri (ISyE) |
| Samantha Petti (ACO, Math) | 2019 Spring | Testing Geometric Convexity | Santosh Vempala (CS) |
| George Kerchev (Math) | 2018 Spring | Asymptotic behavior of the length of the longest common subsequence in hidden Markov models | Christian Houdre (Math) |
| Uthaipon Tantipongpipat (CS) | 2018 Spring | Design and Analysis of Approximation Algorithms for Optimal Design | Mohit Singh (ISyE) |
| Jun-Kun Wang (CS) | 2018 Spring | Online Frank-Wolfe and its Application in Herding | Jacob Abernethy (CS) |
| Zhehui Chen (ISyE) | 2018 Spring | Online Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition: Min-max Formulation, Primal Dual Landscape and Efficient Optimization | Tuo Zhao (ISyE) |
| Adrian Rivera Cardoso (ISyE) | 2018 Spring | Online Risk Averse Minimization with Bandit Feedback | Huan Xu (ISyE) |
| He Guo (Math) | 2018 Spring | Semi-Random Algorithmic Constructions | Lutz Warnke (Math) |
| Rui Gao (ISyE) | 2018 Spring | Wasserstein Distributional Robustness and Generalization | Anton Kleywegt (ISyE) |
| Marcel Celaya (ACO PhD, Math) | 2017 Spring | An Algorithmic Approach to the Gohberg-Markus-Hadwiger Conjecture | Josephine Yu |
| Di Wu (OR PhD, ISyE) | 2017 Spring | Computing Budget Allocation Under Input Uncertainty | Enlu Zhou |
| Samira Samadi (CS PhD) ARC-IISP Fellowship | 2017 Spring | Human Computation with Application to Humanly Usable and Secure Password Methods | Santosh Vempala |
| Alfredo Torrico (OR PhD, ISyE) | 2017 Spring | Online Constrained Submodular Minimization with Bandit Feedback | Sebastian Pokutta |
| Sadra Yazdanbod (ACO PhD, CS) | 2016 Spring | A Market for Scheduling, with Applications to Cloud Computing | Vijay Vazirani |
| Xie Weijun (ISyE) | 2016 Spring | On Distributionally Robust Joint Chance-Constrained Problems | Shabbir Ahmed |
| Ben Cousins (ACO PhD, CS) | 2016 Spring | Theoretical and Applied Tools for High-dimensional Sampling | Santosh Vempala |
| Tung Mai (ACO PhD, CS), | 2016 Fall | Approximating the Non-symmetric Nash Social Welfare | Vijay Vazirani |
| Tianxin Tang (CS PhD, CS), ARC-IISP Fellowship | 2016 Fall | Keyless Fuzzy Search on Encrypted Data | Alexandra Boldyreva |
| Kevin Lai (ACO PhD, CS) | 2016 Fall | Parameter Estimation for Mixtures of Gaussians with Adversarial Noise | Santosh Vempala |
| David Durfee (ACO PhD, CS) | 2016 Fall | Vertex Elimination Techniques and their Applications to Graph Algorithms | Richard Peng |
| Ezgi Karabulut (OR PhD, ISyE) | 2016 Fall | Auction Algorithms for Distributed Integer Programming | Shabbir Ahmed and George Nemhauser |
| Bo Xie (CSE) | 2015 Fall | Convergence of Non-Convex Optimization in Deep Learning | Le Song |
| Emma Cohen (Math) | 2015 Fall | Mixing with Monotone Censoring | Prasad Tetali |
| Spencer Backman (Math) | 2014 Spring | A Complex Valued Hypergraph Laplachain | Matt Baker |
| Gustavo Angulo (ISyE) | 2014 Spring | A polyhedral study of all-different polytopes | Shabbir Ahmed and Santanu S. Dey |
| Robert Krone (Math) | 2014 Spring | Algorithms for Equivariant Ideals and Varieties | Anton Leykin |
| Andrew Massimino (ECE) | 2014 Spring | Constrained Adaptive Sensing | Mark Davenport |
| Andreas Galanis (CS) | 2014 Spring | Hardness of Approximately Counting Colorings | Eric Vigoda |
| Aurko Roy (ISyE) | 2014 Spring | Learning a Polytope | Sebastian Pokutta |
| Sarah Miracle (CS) | 2014 Spring | Markov Chains to Model Segregation and Biased Surfaces | Dana Randall |
| Sara Krehbiel (CS) | 2014 Spring | Paying for Privacy | Chris Peikert |
| Ioannis Pannageas | 2014 Fall | Replicator dynamics, Equilibria and Diversity in Evolution | Prasad Tetali (Math) |
| Burak Kocuk (ISyE) | 2014 Fall | A Polyhedral Study of DC Transmission Switching Problem | Santanu Dey and Andy Sun (ISyE) |
| Guido Lagos (ISyE) | 2014 Fall | Exact Sampling of Random Walk Paths up to the Maximum | Ton Dieker |
| Cristóbal Guzmán, ISyE | 2013 Spring | A New Model for Image Regularization | Arkadi Nemirovski, ISyE |
| Diego Morán, ISyE | 2013 Spring | On Cutting Planes for Convex Mixed-integer Programs | Santanu Dey, ISyE |
| Chun-Hung Liu, Math | 2013 Spring | Well-quasi-ordering Graphs by the Immersion Relation | Robin Thomas, Math |
| Anand Louis, CS | 2012 Fall | A New Approach Towards Graph Coloring | Santosh Vempala, CS and Prasad Tetali, Math |
| Arindam Khan | 2012 Fall | Algorithms for 3-D Geometric Bin Packing | Prasad Tetali, CS/Math and Henrik I. Christensen, IC |
| Prateek Bhakta (ACO PhD, CS) | 2012 Fall | Mixing Times of the Schelling Segretation Model and Biased Permutations | Dana Randall |
| Farbod Shokrieh, Math | 2012 Fall | Random Basis Algorithm for Regular Matroids | Matt Baker, Math |
| Linji Yang, CS | 2011 Spring | Analysis of the Hard-core Model on Square Lattices Beyond the Tree Uniqueness Threshold | Eric Vigoda, CS |
| Xuefeng Gao, ISyE | 2011 Spring | Capacity Allocation in Queueing Networks | Ton Dieker |
| Abhishek Banerjee, CS | 2011 Spring | Efficient Cryptographic Pseudorandom Generators | Chris Peikert, CS |
| Ricardo Restrepo, Math | 2011 Spring | Spatial Mixing: Refinements and Applications | Prasad Tetali, CS/Math |
| Anand Louis, CS | 2011 Spring | Towards a Spectral Algorithm for Small-set Expansion and Graph Multi-partitioning | Santosh Vempala, Prasad Raghavendra, CS and Prasad Tetali, CS/Math |
| Ning Tan, ACO/Math | 2011 Fall | Constraint Satisfaction Problems with Global Constraints | Prasad Raghavendra, CS |
| Camilo Ortiz, ISyE | 2011 Fall | Implementation of Fast First-Order Methods for Solving Large-Scale Convex Optimization Problem | Renato Monteiro, ISyE |
| Prateek Bhakta (ACO PhD, CS) | 2011 Fall | Markov Chain Convergence in Discrete and Continuous Spaces | Dana Randall |
| Pushkar Tripathi, CS | 2011 Fall | Simple Randomized Algorithms for Assignment Problems | Vijay Vazirani, CS |
| Sara Krehbiel, ACO/CS | 2011 Fall | Threshold Lattice Cryptography | Chris Peikert, CS |
| Chun-Hung Liu and Peter Whalen, Math | 2011 Fall | Tiny Robots: A Resource Allocation Problem | Robin Thomas, Math |
| Daniel Dadush, ISyE | 2011 Fall | Towards Faster Integer Programming | Santosh Vempala, CS |
| Xuefeng Gao (ISyE) | 2010 Spring | Capacity Allocation in Queueing Networks | Ton Dieker, ISyE |
| Ricardo Restrepo, Math | 2010 Spring | Convergence of Local Interactions in Catalan Structures | Prasad Tetali, CS/Math |
| Ravi S. Ganti CS | 2010 Spring | Design and Analysis of Local Kernel Machines | Alexander G. Gray, CSE |
| Da Kuang, CSE | 2010 Spring | Matrix Factorization for Clustering: NMF and Beyond | Haesun Park, CSE |
| Vinod Cheriyan, ISyE | 2010 Fall | A Model of Asset Price Bubbles that Shows Chaotic Dynamics | Anton J. Kleywegt, ISyE and Federico Bonetto, Math |
| Qie He, ISyE | 2010 Fall | A Polyhedral Study of Stochastic Integer Programming | Shabbir Ahmed and George Nemhauser, ISyE |
| Farbod Shokrieh, Math/ECE | 2010 Fall | A Torelli Theorem and a New Set of Invariants for Graphs | Matt Baker, Math |
| Stas Minsker, Math | 2010 Fall | Plug-in Approach to Active Learning | Vladimir Koltchinskii, Math |
| Ying Xiao, CS/ACO | 2010 Fall | Tensors and Random Constraint Satisfaction Problems | Santosh Vempala, CS |
| Karthekeyan Chandrasekaran, CS/ACO | 2010 Fall | The Complexity of Cutting Plane Methods for Random Integer Programs | Santosh Vempala, CS |
| David Cash, CS | 2009 Spring | Circular-Secure Encryption from Learning Problems | Alexandra Boldyreva, CS |
| Gagan Goel, CS | 2009 Spring | Efficient Allocations when the Agents have Submodular Utility/Cost Function | Milena Mihail and Vijay Vazirani |
| Atish Das Sarma, CS | 2009 Spring | Efficient Approaches for Random Walks | Richard J. Lipton, CS |
| Ricardo Restrepo, Math | 2009 Spring | Reconstruction in Random Factor Graphs | Prasad Tetali (GT Math) and Andrea Montanari (Stanford) |
| Amanda Pascoe | 2009 Fall | Cluster Algorithms for Discrete Models of Colloids | Dana Randall, CS |
| Luyi Gui, ISyE | 2009 Fall | Collaboration Mechanism Design under Data Uncertainty in Multicommodity Flow Networks | Ozlem Ergun |
| Daniel Dadush, ISyE | 2009 Fall | Towards the KLS Conjecture for Convex Bodies | Santosh Vempala, CS |
| Atish Das Sarma, CS | 2009 Fall | Walk Fast Distributively and Learn Despite Byzantine Failures | Richard J. Lipton, CS |