The National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US) program aims to increase the number and diversity of domestic graduate students pursuing careers in computer and information science and engineering fields.
The program helps bachelor’s degree holders return to academia and pursue their research interests, enabling them to engage in innovative and high-impact projects without the burden of financial constraints. Each year, a diverse cohort of CSGrad4US fellows is selected based on their demonstrated interest and potential in pursuing a doctorate in a CISE field.
Maya Venkatraman SEAS'21
After graduation, Maya worked in machine learning infrastructure at YouTube Trust and Safety, as well as for the Health AI group at Google Research. Currently, Maya works in the AlQuraishi Lab at Columbia University, where she helps develop genome-scale language models for prokaryotic DNA. Her work spans the full machine learning research stack—from data curation and infrastructure to model architecture design, training, and biological benchmarking. In parallel to her research, Maya is pursuing a part-time Master’s in Statistics at Columbia University, supported by the departmental MA2PhD Fellowship, which identifies students likely to pursue doctoral study in computational fields. She believes that rigorous statistical training is essential for advancing interpretable, efficient, and principled models in computational biology.
Maya is a 2025 recipient of the NSF CSGrad4US Fellowship, which supports her path toward a PhD in computer science focused on machine learning for biology. Her research centers on building representation and generative models for biological systems, with applications spanning genome-scale modeling, protein design, and other areas of systems biology.