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Six Indian-origin scholars bag Microsoft research fellowships
The cohort includes researchers working across artificial intelligence, genomics, and multimodal systems.
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Malvika Choudhary - Thu, 09, Apr 2026
- 16:37 EDT
- 19
(Top L-R) Namrata Kala, Aditya Vashistha, Ravisri Valluri/ (Bottom L-R) Saiman Dahal, Saujas Vaduguru, Chanakya Ekbote / Microsoft
Six Indian-origin researchers, including faculty and PhD scholars at leading U.S. universities, have been named to the 2026 Microsoft Research Fellowship cohort, the company announced April 9.
In the AI for global and societal impact category, Namrata Kala, associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, was selected for her project on global employment and hiring outcomes linked to AI adoption.
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Kala’s research focuses on environmental and development economics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Delhi and a master’s degree from Yale University, and earned her PhD in environmental economics from Yale.
Also in the same category, Aditya Vashistha, assistant professor at Cornell University, was named a fellowship advisor for work on grounding AI in global majority languages, cultures, and contexts.
Vashistha completed his bachelor of technology in information technology from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology in India and later earned his master’s and PhD in computer science from the University of Washington.
Under AI fundamentals: scalable reasoning, model adaptation and evaluation, Ravisri Valluri, a PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles, was selected for research on post-training of retrieval models.
Valluri completed her bachelor of technology in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras before beginning her doctoral studies. She previously worked at Microsoft on large-scale generative retrieval systems.
In the biological and scientific modeling category, Saiman Dahal, a PhD student at Washington State University, was named for his work on generative models for regulatory genomics.
Dahal completed his bachelor of engineering in computer science from Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Engineering in Dharan and is currently working on applying machine learning and high-performance computing to biological systems. He said he was “incredibly grateful to be named a Microsoft Research Fellow.”
In human-AI collaboration and interaction, Saujas Vaduguru, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, was selected for research on AI as a collaborative teammate. Vaduguru completed his master of science in computational linguistics from the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, before pursuing his PhD.
In the multimodal and embodied intelligence category, Chanakya Ekbote, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was selected for work on foundational approaches to multimodal large language models. Ekbote previously held research roles at Microsoft and the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.
Microsoft said the fellowship program is designed to support open research collaboration between academic scholars and Microsoft researchers on challenges intended to advance scientific understanding, innovation, and societal benefit.
The company said selected fellows collaborate with Microsoft Research teams and receive institutional funding as part of the program.
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