Strong collaboration with faculty, students and universities are vital to IBM. The Fully Funded IBM PhD Fellowship Award Program advances this collaboration by recognizing and supporting exceptional PhD students who want to make their mark in promising and disruptive technologies. Focus areas include the following topics of particular interest:

• AI / Cognitive Computing
• Cloud / Open Source
• Data Science
• Internet of Things
• Quantum Computing
• Security / Cyber Security

An IBMer will mentor all the IBM PhD Fellowship awardees in order to collaborate on a research or technology project for the duration of the award period. Further, IBM strongly encourages the Fellows to take an internship during the first or second year of their award.

Fully Funded IBM PhD Fellowship Award

IBM awards a two-year Fully funded PhD Fellowship Award worldwide. A fellowship includes a stipend for two academic years from 2020 to 2022. Further,  in the US, an education allowance for year one (2020-2021).

In the US, fellowship recipients while in school will receive a stipend for living expenses, travel, and to attend conferences ($35,000 for 2020-2021 and $35,000 for 2021-2022). US fellowship recipients will also receive $25,000 toward their education in 2020-2021.

Outside the US, fellowship recipients while in school will receive a competitive stipend for living expenses, travel, and to attend conferences for the two academic years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. Fellowship stipends vary by country.

Eligibility for the IBM PhD Fellowship Award

A doctoral faculty member must nominate the students for the fully funded IBM PhD Fellowship Award. Further, the nominates student must be a full-time student in a PhD program over the two consecutive academic years of the award.

Students should have three years remaining in their graduate program at the time of nomination. Students from US embargoed countries are not eligible for the program.

IBM will select the award recipients on the basis of their overall potential for research excellence, the degree to which their technical interests align with those of IBM, and their academic progress to-date, as evidenced by publications and endorsements from their faculty advisor and department head.

Students receiving a comparable fellowship or internship from another company or institution during the same academic period may not be eligible for an IBM PhD Fellowship Award.

How to apply for the IBM PhD Fellowship Award

Students may not apply directly for the fully funded IBM PhD Fellowship Award. A doctoral faculty member must nominate the eligible candidate for the fellowship.

While filling up the application, the faculty member must provide information about the student as well as themselves(the faculty advisor), the department head and university administration. They must also attach the student’s CV. Correspondence via e-mail is necessary to complete the nomination process and all information in connection with the IBM PhD Fellowship program. Input to lengthy fields (such as the department head’s supporting statement) may be provided by copy-and-paste from another document.

Furthermore, the nominating faculty will need to provide the additional documentation if IBM rewards the nominated student.

Deadline

IBM accepts the application for the Fully Funded PhD Fellowship Award until 24 October 2019. Applications arriving after the deadline are ineligible for the fellowship.