Introducing the incoming CBI fellows

The CBI fellowship program offers two years of full support to a postdoctoral researcher to advance their career as a member of the CMU community. Our goal is simple: provide emerging research talents with the resources, flexibility, and the environment to address “grand challenge” style problems in close collaboration with a CMU faculty member. The CBI fellowship is designed to help excellent individuals to expand their professional horizons and make a lasting positive impact in their academic careers and, ultimately, in society.  

Last January, nearly 60 applicants from top-tier Ph.D. programs around the world submitted their proposals in response to our second call (a solid 20% increase from 2023). Our review committee had the difficult task of selecting candidates that best fit the criteria outlined in our Call for Applications:  

• Presentation of a compelling future research vision, both during their postdoctoral period and beyond, grounded on an excellent body of work

• Proposal of a highly collaborative approach that maximizes their engagement with the campus community while at CMU 

• Potential for positive societal impact resulting from their activity beyond the core scientific excellence 

In addition, our top candidates not only had a distinguished academic track record, but they also demonstrated an impressive aptitude for leadership. Our definition of leadership took many forms, whether it was through their mentorship of fellow researchers, a strong interest in community building / engagement, or a passion for working beyond the traditional borders of their respective academic institutions. 

Today, we have the privilege of introducing five remarkable candidates whose applications rose to the top of this fiercely competitive process: Meet Jinfeng Lou, Lisa Masserova, Evan Walter Clark Spotte-Smith, Qiaosi Wang, and Xiang Yue–individuals whose passion, accomplishments, and potential make us proud to introduce them as the second cohort of CBI Fellows! 

Jinfeng Lou

A Ph.D. candidate in construction management within the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong, Lou will research human-AI collaboration techniques for improving urban subway flood responses under the direction of Pingbo Tang and Cleotilde Gonzalez. 

Lisa Masserova

A Ph.D. candidate in the computer science department at CMU who is co-advised by Bryan Parno and Vipul Goyal, Masserova's research interests lie in developing real-world solutions to hard cryptographic problems. As part of the post-doctoral research in collaboration with Elaine Shi, she aims to utilize interdisciplinary techniques from theoretical and applied cryptography, intertwined with insights from game theory, privacy, and hardware security to build practical solutions for large-scale distributed systems within the context of the Internet of Things. 

Evan Walter Clark Spotte-Smith

As an incoming assistant professor of chemical engineering at CMU (starting Fall 2025) and postdoctoral research fellow in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at CMU, Spotte-Smith previously completed a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Chemical Engineering at CMU. They will be working with Rachel C. Kurchin on the topic “Machine-Learning Enhanced Design of Electrocatalytic Reactions.” 

Qiaosi Wang 

Wang is a human-centered computing Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech, focusing on human-AI interaction and responsible AI under Ashok K. Goel where she was the GVU Foley Scholar award recipient. She will be working with Hong Shen and Jodi Forlizzi on the topic “Designing Responsible and Human-Centered AI.” 

Xiang Yue

Specializing in natural language processing and large language models under the guidance of Graham Neubig, Yue is a postdoctoral researcher at CMU. Having earned his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, Yue's research focuses on enhancing the reasoning capabilities and responsibility of LLMs. He is currently working on the project "From Humans to AI and Back: Emulating Human Intelligence and Cultivating Responsibility for Society." 

As we welcome these new fellows to campus, we are reminded of the transformative power of the collective CMU community to further our respective intellectual pursuits. To help facilitate the introduction to and engagement of our second cohort of CBI fellows within this community, we will be posting a series of in-depth articles covering the fellows, their thoughts, and the vision they have shared with their faculty hosts. Keep an eye on this space over the next few months!