Surbhi Goel Named 2026 Sloan Research Fellow

Surbhi Goel, Magerman Term Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Science (CIS), has been named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow, one of 126 early-career scholars across the United States and Canada selected for this prestigious honor. Sloan Research Fellowships are among the most competitive and esteemed awards available to rising scientists and scholars and are widely recognized as indicators of scientific creativity, impact and future leadership.

Awarded annually since 1955 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the fellowships support fundamental research by early-career faculty across chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Each Fellow receives a two-year, $75,000 award that may be used flexibly to advance their research.

“We are thrilled to see Surbhi recognized with this well-deserved honor,” says Zachary Ives, Adani President’s Distinguished Professor and Chair of CIS. “The Sloan Fellowship reflects not only her outstanding research accomplishments to date but also her potential to shape the future of theoretical computer science and machine learning.”

Goel is affiliated with the Theory Group, the ASSET Center on Safe, Explainable and Trustworthy AI Systems, and the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences. Her work lies at the intersection of theoretical computer science and machine learning, with a focus on developing theoretical foundations for modern learning paradigms.

“My main research goal is to make AI systems trustworthy by developing the mathematical foundations to explain and predict their failures, provide guarantees that they remain reliable under novel conditions and ensure they can collaborate safely with humans,” says Goel. “This fellowship gives me the freedom to pursue this ambitious, long-horizon foundational work, and to build a research community at Penn focused on making AI not just powerful, but provably reliable and safe.”

The Sloan Research Fellowships recognize early-career scholars whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments distinguish them as leaders in their fields. More than 1,000 researchers are nominated each year by their scientific peers, and winners are selected by independent panels of senior scholars based on research excellence and potential for future impact.

This year’s cohort reflects a broad range of institutions and disciplines. Read the full announcement here and learn more about Goel’s work on her research website.