Three UTCS professors won a 2017 Google Faculty Research award, which is awarded to academic researchers in order to fund research proposals. Vijay Chidambaram received an award for systems research, Kristen Grauman received an award for machine perception research, and Işil Dillig received an award for security research.

The Google Faculty Research Awards program aims to recognize and financially support faculty at academic institutions who are working on research in fields of interest to Google. The award amount is designed to support one graduate student for one year, and the award money is given as an unrestricted gift. According to the Research at Google website, the award is highly competitive, and only around 15 percent of applicants receive this funding.

This year, nearly 200 researchers from universities and institutions around the world received an award. A total of five UT faculty members won the award; in addition to the computer science faculty, electrical and computer engineering and School of Information professor Edison Thomaz received an award for machine perception research, and mechanical engineering professor Vaibhav Bahadur received an award for systems research.