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The 2026 fellowship pairs financial support with computing resources and access to Google researchers. Its projects range from accessible security tools to more reliable language-model reasoning.
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The fellowship's value proposition is infrastructure and access as well as money: recipients can use compute and connect with Google researchers while pursuing work from Nigerian-language speech recognition to chip efficiency and medical-imaging interpretability. Google says the program has backed more than 1,100 graduate students since 2009; the new $13 million round adds 148 researchers across 38 countries. The highlighted work is a portfolio of research aims, not evidence that the projects have already produced results.
In Brazil, fellows are using machine learning to combine genetic data and investigate disease causes.
South African projects focus on making medical-imaging neural networks more interpretable and reliable.
Researchers in Germany are co-designing security and privacy tools with Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.
Google.org is providing $13 million for its 2026 PhD Fellowship recipients, including 148 new fellows across 38 countries. Announced November 12, 2026, the awards support research ranging from medical imaging to language-model reasoning, pairing financial backing with computing resources and connections to Google’s researchers and a global scientific peer network.
The support goes beyond a financial award. Fellows receive direct funding and access to compute—the computing resources used to carry out their work. They also gain opportunities to engage with Google researchers and join an international network of scientific peers.
Google describes that combination as a way to give early-career scientists room to pursue high-risk, high-reward ideas. The stated focus is foundational research: questions about how AI and computing work, alongside investigations aimed at health, accessibility and other public needs.
The newly selected fellows represent 38 countries.
The projects Google highlights cover both the underlying technology and the communities it is intended to serve. These are research directions, not a list of breakthroughs delivered by the new awards.
The Google PhD Fellowship Program has supported more than 1,100 graduate students worldwide since 2009, according to Google. The company says its alumni include tenured professors, startup founders, open-source contributors and research leaders, including people working at Google itself.
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