2 Tar Heels are 2025 Google PhD fellows

Two doctoral students at UNC-Chapel Hill have been named 2025 Google PhD Fellows. Viviane “Vivi” Ito, the first student in the UNC School of Information and Library Science to be a Google fellow, received a fellowship in human-computer interaction. Vaidehi Patil, a student in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ computer science department, received a fellowship in machine learning and ML foundations.

Google PhD Fellowships directly support graduate students as they pursue a doctorate in computer science or a related field. The fellowship lasts up to two years, providing each fellow up to $85,000 per year toward education costs, living expenses, travel and personal equipment, and connecting each of them to a Google research mentor.

This year, Google provided 255 fellowships across 35 countries and 12 research domains, recognizing “researchers who understand that accelerating scientific discovery is vital to solving the world’s toughest challenges.”

Vivi Ito

Ito is also a graduate research assistant in the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life. Her adviser is Francesca Tripodi, associate professor at UNC SILS and principal investigator with CITAP.

Ito’s research takes an innovative, human-centered approach to understanding how artificial intelligence systems shape trust, learning and decision-making in seeking health information. Her project explores how AI-driven search tools, such as AI Overviews and ChatGPT, affect user trust and learning outcomes compared to traditional search engines.

For Ito, who came to academia after a decade-long career in digital marketing, this recognition represents both professional validation and personal fulfillment. “I come from the industry, and I wasn’t very happy,” Ito said. “Being recognized with this fellowship feels like a symbol that my transition has been successful and that I’m doing something I really like — with purpose.”

Her research journey began during her master’s studies, when she investigated how people with chronic or underdiagnosed conditions, such as endometriosis and heart failure, use digital platforms to find information and build communities. Those early projects revealed how challenging it can be to access trustworthy health information.

Vaidehi Patil

Patil’s research seeks to make deep learning models safer and more responsible for real-world applications. Her work combines aspects of safety, privacy, security for large language models, multimodal models and multiagent systems. Her doctoral work is advised by Mohit Bansal, the John R. and Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor in computer science. She is part of the Multimodal Understanding, Reasoning and Generation for Language Lab and the broader UNC-AI group.

“I’m honored to receive the Google PhD Fellowship and grateful for the recognition of my research on machine unlearning, defenses against adversarial attacks and multiagent privacy. This support motivates me to explore further how large models can reason about privacy and collaborate responsibly, especially in real-world, multiagent settings,” Patil said. “I’m especially grateful to my adviser, professor Mohit Bansal, and my mentors and collaborators for their invaluable support and encouragement.”

Before pursuing a doctorate at Carolina, Patil earned a Bachelor of Technology in electrical engineering, with a minor in computer science and engineering, and a Master of Technology in AI and data science from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. She has interned for top tech companies, including Google DeepMind, Apple, Adobe Research and Amazon AGI Labs.

See the full list of 2025 Google PhD Fellowship recipients on the Google Research website.