Mladen Kolar waits at Pittsburgh International Airport for his long trip home to Croatia. He has spent the past three days in an orientation at Carnegie Mellon for the Computer Science master's degree program. Kolar was relieved to meet several of the students who will enter the program with him in the fall of 2007. He must have made a good impression with his future classmates because when his plane touches down in Europe, he is shocked by his 10 "friend requests" on Facebook, the online social-networking Web site that has wide popularity in the United States but hasn't caught on yet in Croatia.
Around the same time, Leslie John is finishing her undergraduate studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. In the fall, she plans to pursue a master's degree in behavioral-decision research at Carnegie Mellon. She, like Kolar, isn't a regular Facebook user.
Fast-forward to spring 2010. Kolar and John each have more than 400 Facebook friends. They are PhD candidates at Carnegie Mellon, but they don't know each other. Both happen to apply for a Facebook fellowship that is meant to promote graduate studies in computer science and related areas. The fellowship delivers a full year's tuition, $30,000, a new computer, and all-expense-paid trips to conferences of their choice. Hundreds of PhD candidates from other universities, including Cornell, MIT, Princeton, and Stanford, also apply for the fellowship. Carnegie Mellon students claim seven of the 22 finalist spots that come with a $500 prize. Kolar and John aren't just finalists. They are two of the five winners.
Kolar plans to use his fellowship to further research the structure of networks. John plans to explore the psychology behind personal information disclosure. The Facebook fellows aren't Facebook friends. At least, not yet.
-Nicholas Ducassi (A'10)
Related Link:
Two of Five from Carnegie Mellon
