Applications closed

Systems for Machine Learning request for proposals

About

Machine learning (ML) methods have been widely applied to a large variety of day-to-day services hosted by Facebook. These services include personal recommendation, content understanding (language translation, vision, and speech), integrity, and more. As Facebook increasingly relies on ML systems to better address the individual needs of users, we also invest in full-stack and end-to-end optimization in our infrastructure to guarantee the quality of services in performance, availability, accuracy, and reliability. Such high QoS is achieved holistically across the entire computing stack from robust machine learning development frameworks down to maximizing compute/power efficiency in data centers. The breadth of this endeavor is often beyond internal research and development, and includes outreach to and collaboration with research communities in academia.

To sustain traditional computing at scale for ever-growing machine learning workloads in our data centers, we continue to call for impactful solutions in the areas of developer toolkits, compilers/code generation, system architecture, memory technologies, and ML accelerator support. In addition, emerging issues around compute trustworthiness and data privacy have become forthcoming challenges and require interdisciplinary innovation between system engineers and privacy/security scientists. We are looking forward to novel system design approaches to enable privacy-preserving machine learning, differential privacy, or multi-party compute. Finally, we are interested in exploring any disruptive, game-changing technology for the landscape of training and inference for machine learning.

To foster further innovation and to deepen our collaboration with academia, Facebook is pleased to invite faculty to respond to this call for research proposals pertaining to the aforementioned topics. Applicants should submit a maximum two-page proposal detailing what contribution their research is expected to make, how the research domain will benefit from the work, and a budget overview of how the proposed funding will be used. Proposals are highly encouraged to focus funding on project personnel, especially PhD students. Proposals from small interdisciplinary teams with complementary expertise are also encouraged. We anticipate awarding six to nine proposals, in the range of $50,000 to $100,000 with larger awards for interdisciplinary collaborations between multiple PIs. Payment will be made to the proposer’s host university as an unrestricted gift.


Award Recipients

Cornell University

Christopher Batten

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michael Carbin

Columbia University

Asaf Cidon

Princeton University

Prateek Mittal

Stanford University

Kunle Olukotun

KAIST

Minsoo Rhu

University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Marco Serafini

London School of Economics and Political Science

Milan Vojnovic

Duke University

Lisa Wu Wills

Michigan State University

Mi Zhang

Applications Are Currently CLosed

Application Timeline

Notifications will be sent by email to selected applicants by December 2019.

Launch Date

September 20, 2019

Deadline

November 1, 2019

Winners Announced

December 2019

Areas of Interest

This year, we are particularly interested in proposals that fall into these categories:

  • Scalable, elastic, and reliable distributed machine learning and inference
  • System and architecture support for personalized recommendation systems
  • Programming language and compilers for platform-agnostic machine learning
  • Resource provisioning for efficient inference/training in heterogeneous data centers
  • On-device training and inference
  • System and architecture support for privacy-preserving machine learning
  • System support for multi-party compute and private/secure inference
  • Emerging technologies, such as near-memory processing and in-memory computing systems applied to machine learning
  • Novel machine learning systems beyond neural networks
  • Emerging technologies for efficient machine learning

Requirements

Proposals should include

  • A summary of the project (1-2 pages) explaining the area of focus, a description of techniques, any relevant prior work, and a timeline with milestones and expected outcomes
  • A draft budget description (1 page) including an approximate cost of the award and explanation of how funds would be spent
  • Curriculum Vitae for all project participants
  • Organization details. This will include tax information and administrative contact details

Eligibility

  • Awards must comply with applicable U.S. and international laws, regulations, and policies.
  • Applicants must be current full-time faculty at an accredited academic institution that awards research degrees to PhD students.
  • Applicants must be the Principal Investigator on any resulting award.

Frequently Asked Questions

Terms & Conditions

Facebook’s decisions will be final in all matters relating to this solicitation, including interpretation of these Terms and awards at any time. All items apply unless otherwise stated in each RFP. Please Read These Terms Carefully Before Proceeding.

  • By submitting this proposal, you are authorizing Facebook to evaluate the proposal for a potential award, and you agree to the terms herein.
  • You agree that Facebook will not be required to treat any part of the proposal as confidential or protected by copyright, and may use, edit, modify, copy, reproduce and distribute all or a portion of your proposal in any manner for the sole purposes of administering the website and evaluating the contents of the proposal.
  • You agree and acknowledge that personal data submitted with the proposal, including name, mailing address, phone number, and email address of you and other named researchers in the proposal may be collected, processed, stored and otherwise used by Facebook for the purposes of administering the website and evaluating the contents of the proposal.
  • You acknowledge that neither party is obligated to enter into any business transaction as a result of the proposal submission, Facebook is under no obligation to review or consider the proposal, and neither party acquires any intellectual property rights as a result of submitting the proposal.
  • Any feedback you provide to Facebook in the proposal regarding its products or services will not be treated as confidential or protected by copyright, and Facebook is free to use such feedback on an unrestricted basis with no compensation to you.
  • Applicants represent and warrant that they have authority to submit a proposal in connection with this RFP and grant the rights set forth herein on behalf of their organization.

EVENT ATTENDANCE

If Facebook is offering event attendance and related travel to grant recipients, the specific travel benefits, travel dates and additional details (collectively, “Travel Benefits”) will be provided by Facebook to the grant recipient. Any Travel Benefits are subject to the terms set forth herein and at Sponsor’s sole discretion. Event dates and associated travel dates will be determined in Facebook’s sole discretion. Facebook will contact all event attendees to coordinate Travel Benefits. Any taxes (federal, state, provincial, and local) and other costs and expenses associated with the Travel Benefits will be the sole responsibility of the academic institution and/or attendees, as applicable.

It is each event attendee’s sole responsibility to comply with all travel requirements, which may include, without limitation, presenting a valid passport, visa and/or other necessary identification (including photograph) at the time of travel. Facebook is not liable for any missed events, opportunities or expenses incurred as a consequence of flight cancellation/delay or ground transportation delay. Attendee(s) may be required to provide a credit card at time of hotel check-in to cover hotel incidentals. By accepting Travel Benefits, all event attendees agrees to maintain their behavior in accordance with all applicable laws and generally accepted social practices in connection with participation in any event-related activity. Each event attendee understands and agrees that Facebook or travel providers have the right, in their sole discretion, to remove an attendee from any travel or event activity at any time if the attendee’s behavior at any point is uncooperative, disruptive, or may or does cause damage to person, property, or the reputation of Facebook or otherwise violates the policies of the travel providers, and in such a case, the attendee will still be solely responsible for all taxes and other expenses related to the travel benefits. EVENT ATTENDEES AGREE THAT THE RELEASED PARTIES ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE IN ANY WAY FOR ANY ADDITIONAL EXPENSES, OMISSIONS, DELAYS, OR RE-ROUTING RESULTING FROM ANY ACTS OF ANY GOVERNMENT OR AUTHORITY.

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License

By submitting an RFP, except where prohibited by law, each applicant grants to the Released Parties (defined below) (and their agents, successors, and assigns) the irrevocable, transferable, sublicensable, absolute right and permission to use, edit, modify, copy, reproduce, and distribute applicants’ RFP proposal (with or without reference to each person associated with the RFP) in perpetuity on the internet in any language, throughout the world, for the limited purposes of administering and promoting the RFP, Facebook’s Research program, and publicizing the gift recipients.

General Rules

Facebook’s decisions will be final in all matters relating to this RFP, including interpretation of these Terms and award of gifts at any time. Facebook shall have no liability for organizations’ use of any gifts provided hereunder, including any use of gifts not in connection with the RFP.

All grant funds or other benefits provided by Facebook in connection with this RFP shall be used only in accordance with applicable laws and shall not be used in any way, directly or indirectly, to facilitate any act that would constitute bribery or an illegal kickback, an illegal campaign contribution, or would otherwise violate any applicable anti-corruption or political activities law. Gifts may not be transferred (a) to any individual, entity, or country prohibited by any applicable U.S. or non-U.S. export controls and trade sanctions; (b) to anyone on U.S. or non-U.S. government restricted parties lists; or (c) for any purpose prohibited by applicable export controls and trade sanctions, including nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or missile technology applications without the required government authorizations. You acknowledge that Facebook is subject to U.S. economic restrictions and trade sanctions. As such, Facebook reserves the right to deny distribution of any gift when required by applicable law. The applicants agree to comply with all applicable laws and regulations during throughout the RFP and while using any funds that may be received by Facebook.

Applicants agree not to accept an award made by Facebook if (a) it would interfere with their official duties, (b) it does not comply with applicable regulations, policies, and rules of applicant’s institution, or applicable laws, regulations, rules, judgments, and orders of any court or governmental authority; or (c) it conflicts with any other obligation the applicant or applicant’s institution have to any other party. Applicant also shall not perform any official action to improperly benefit Facebook.

Applicants acknowledge that they may not use Facebook’s logos or trademarks without prior written approval. All requests for use of the Facebook name or trademark must be submitted via the online form available at www.facebookbrand.com/requests.

LIMITATION OF LIABILITY

EACH PARTICIPATING INDIVIDUAL AND ORGANIZATION AND EACH OF ITS AGENTS AND REPRESENTATIVES, AGREES TO RELEASE AND HOLD HARMLESS FACEBOOK, INC. AND ITS SUBSIDIARY COMPANIES, AFFILIATES, DIVISIONS, FRANCHISEES, REPRESENTATIVES, CONSULTANTS, SUB-CONTRACTORS, SUPPLIERS, DISTRIBUTORS, LEGAL COUNSEL, ADVERTISING, PUBLIC RELATIONS, PROMOTIONAL, FULFILLMENT AND MARKETING AGENCIES, AND RFP PARTNERS (COLLECTIVELY, THE “RELEASED PARTIES”) FOR ANY LIABILITY WHATSOEVER ASSOCIATED WITH PARTICIPATION IN THIS RFP.

Disclaimers

Released Parties are not responsible and/or liable for any of the following: any delivery failure or other error in RFP-related correspondence, transmission or materials; technical or human error which may occur in the administration of the RFP or the processing of applications; or any injury or damage to persons or property which may be caused, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, from applicant’s participation in the RFP. Without limiting any other provision of these Terms, no Released Party is responsible or liable for any injury or damage to the persons or property of applicants or any third party based on use by such party of any RFP submission made available as part of this RFP. Without limiting any other provision in these Terms, the Released Parties are not responsible or liable to any applicant for any inability to proceed with the RFP or failure to provide a gift or any part thereof, in the event that any of the RFP activities or Facebook’s operations or activities are affected, as determined by Facebook, by any cause or event beyond the sole and reasonable control of Facebook.

Disputes/Governing Law

Except where prohibited by law, any and all disputes, claims, and causes of action between an applicant and any Released Party arising out of or connected with this RFP or these Terms must be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action or legal action on behalf of any group. Further, in any such dispute, under no circumstances will an applicant be permitted or entitled to obtain awards for, and hereby waives all rights to claim punitive, incidental or consequential damages, or any other damages, including attorneys’ fees, other than the applicant’s actual out-of-pocket expenses (if any), not to exceed ten dollars ($10) and each applicant further waives all rights to have damages multiplied or increased.

Except where prohibited by law, this RFP and any dispute arising under these Terms or related to these Terms or the RFP (whether for breach of contract, tortious conduct, or otherwise) will be governed by the internal laws of the State of California, U.S.A., without giving effect to its conflicts of law or choice of law principles or rules that would cause the application of the laws of any other jurisdiction. Except where prohibited by law, any legal actions, suits or proceedings related to this RFP (whether for breach of contract, tortious conduct, or otherwise) will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in or having jurisdiction over San Mateo County, California, U.S.A., and each applicant accepts and submits to the personal jurisdiction of those courts with respect to any legal actions, suits or proceedings arising out of or related to this RFP.