Zhewen Pan, a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received the 2025 Google PhD Fellowship in Computer Architecture.
Google PhD fellowships include a stipend, tuition and fees, and mentorship from a Google Research Mentor. Students selected for the fellowship are among the most promising young academics working in computer science and related fields.
“The student nominations we received this year were exemplary in their quality, but Zhewen especially stood out and was endorsed by the research scientists and distinguished engineers within Google who participated in the review,” said the Google PhD Fellowship Team.
Pan researches efficient computer architecture, including sustainable computing, in the lab of Joshua San Miguel, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Computer architecture is the space that connects the hardware of a machine with the software most people interact with, and Pan said there are a lot of opportunities in that space.
“There are a lot of computers on the data center networks, and a lot of them are running large language models and so on. They are not that efficient, because they burn a lot of power,” Pan said. “We are really concerned about this. Our goal here is trying to make computers more efficient.”
Some of Pan’s recent projects include working on improving data compression to create more efficient memory and storage without sacrificing performance. She’s also worked with lab mates to create a new strategy to make computing more efficient, which they named value-level parallelism.
“Zhewen has already had so much impact even at such an early stage in her career,” said Pan’s advisor San Miguel. “She not only contributes novel and insightful research to her field, but at the same time contributes to classroom teaching, peer review and mentoring programs for young students. This is what makes her an exceptional scholar. It’s one thing to be able to master the technical skills, but it’s something special to be able to share that mastery to help others and grow both the field and the community.”
Pan initially wanted to be an architect or interior designer. She got into electrical and computer engineering as an undergraduate and decided to go into computer engineering after taking a computer architecture course that she enjoyed. Computer architecture is interesting and challenging, while also leaving room for creativity, she said.
“There is a lot of space where you can design a computer that’s similar to a real architect,” she said, noting that she chose to come to UW–Madison for graduate school because of San Miguel’s novel and creative work in this space.
Pan previously applied to many industry fellowships with various tech and computing companies. She encouraged other graduate students in similar fields to apply for these opportunities when they arise.
“It may seem intimidating,” she said. “I thought about not submitting anything because it’s kind of hard to write the statement. But I think it’s worthwhile to always try to submit something when you get a chance.”
One thing Pan said helped her application was having won the N+1 Institute Reverse Pitch Competition in 2024, where Google sponsored scholarships for the best ideas to reduce the environmental impact of data centers.
Now, as a Google PhD fellow, Pan will continue to develop and design efficiency-driven computer architecture. She also looks forward to having a Google mentor through the fellowship.
In this field, “you interact very intensively with companies, so I think having that feedback is really important,” she said.