Vinayak M. Kumar, a fourth-year Ph.D. student, has earned a position in 2025 Fellowship class for Jane Street, a trading company that will utilize new technologies to aid their clients.
The Department of Computer Science is proud to celebrate fourth-year Ph.D. student, Vinayak M. Kumar, who earned a coveted fellowship with Jane Street.
Jane Street, a trading firm that utilizes technology and “a scientific approach” in its business, announced Kumar as one of its nine fellows in the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Award class. Fellows come from over 15 different universities in wide range disciplines including computer science, mathematics, physics, and statistics.
“My first few years of research were filled with me flailing around trying to find my interests, with lots of uncertainty about the future or if I was on the right track. It was also definitely filled with rejections, whether it be graduate school rejections, conference rejections, or fellowship rejections,” Kumar said. “Although the future is still uncertain, winning the fellowship definitely gave me a sense of validation that I was doing something right, and made all the rejections I had continued through worth it.”
Kumar’s research focuses on pseudorandomness and computational complexity, two subfields of theoretical computer science. Before attending UT and working with David Zuckerman, Kumar received his B.S. in mathematics and computer science from the California Institute of Technology. This is his second time applying for the fellowship, he said.
“This award is highly competitive across disciplines,” department chair Don Fussell said in an email to UTCS staff. “Winning it is a real honor and significant recognition of the excellence of (Kumar’s) research.”