Praneeth Vepakomma, a PhD student in the Camera Culture research group, has been selected as a mentor for the Fatima Fellowship, a human-centric initiative for globalizing the training required for machine learning research. Mentors are PhD students, postdocs, and researchers at top universities and research labs. This year's current mentee applications were received from across 52 countries.

The Fatima Al-Fihri Predoctoral Fellowship is a free, nine-month program in which students from around the world, who are planning on applying to computer science or machine learning PhD programs in the United States or Europe, work with current PhD students or researchers on research projects to gain experience and strengthen their applications. This fellowship is made possible by generous sponsorship from Hugging Face.

Established in 2021, the Fatima Fellowship is named after Fatima Al-Fihri, who created in 859 CE the oldest-running university in the world, an international university for immigrants in Fez, Morocco.

Vepakomma says, “I have had some wonderful mentors along my career path, and I deeply care about taking my turn in giving back to the academic and research ecosystem through opportunities like this."