Q: What is the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards Program?
A: The IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Awards Program is an intensely competitive worldwide program, which honors exceptional Ph.D. students who have an interest in solving problems of interest to IBM and which are fundamental to innovation including, innovative software, new types of computers, and technology, and interdisciplinary projects that create social and business value.
Q: Who is eligible for IBM Ph.D. Fellowships?
A: Nominations are welcome for students of all nationalities. Students must be nominated by a faculty member. They must be enrolled full-time in a college or university Ph.D. program, and they should have completed at least one year of study in their doctoral program at the time of their nomination. Non-U.S. Citizens who wish to participate in an internship in the U.S. must obtain work authorization under the specifics of their particular visa. Students from U.S. embargoed countries are not eligible for the program.
Eligibility in Europe and Russia: Students must be nominated by a doctoral faculty member. They must be enrolled full-time in a college or university Ph.D. program, and they may be nominated in their first year of study in their doctoral program.
Q: Must I be a citizen of the country of application to qualify?
A: No; however, IBM may solicit local country residency and citizenship information for legal compliance purposes as part of the award process. IBM is a U.S. headquartered company and complies with all applicable laws and regulations.
Q: Am I eligible for the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship if I hold more than one fellowship/scholarship during the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship award period?
A: While students may accept other supplemental fellowships, to be eligible for the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship they may not accept a major fellowship in addition to the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship.
Eligibility in Europe and Russia: While students may accept government scholarships and other supplemental fellowships, to be eligible for the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award they may not accept a major fellowship.
Please contact phdfellow@us.ibm.com with any questions.
Q: Where can I get the forms for an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship nomination?
A: All nominations for the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship must be submitted by faculty electronically over the Web on a standardized form so as to facilitate an open and uniform competition. The nomination form will be available on the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship nomination Web site from September 22 to October 29, 2009.
Q: What if I start an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship nomination and cannot finish?
A: You can save your nomination and return to complete it at a later time. Simply return to the nomination form on the Web and re-enter your IBM Registration ID and password.
Q: Can students submit nominations themselves?
A: No. Students must be nominated by a faculty member. The nomination form must be prepared and submitted by a faculty member.
Q: Is there a limit to the number of applications that a department may submit?
A: IBM requests that no more than two nominations per department be submitted, in addition to any renewal nominations.
Q: What information does a student have to submit (for example: a CV, research proposal and letter)?
A: A student does not submit any nomination or documentation to IBM, only professors may nominate students. At the initial stage, a nomination includes the student's CV, faculty nominator's supporting statement, department head's supporting statement, Ph.D. thesis title, and a brief description of Ph.D. thesis work. Further along the process, there may be a request for two letters of reference.
Q: What are the effective dates of the 2010-2011 IBM Ph.D. Fellowship?
A: The 2010-2011 Fellowship begins in the fall semester of 2010 and covers the academic year. The associated internship may be a summer assignment in 2010 or 2011, or an on-site assignment during the academic year, depending on the arrangements made between the Award Recipient and her/his IBM Mentor and faculty advisor.
Q: Can an IBM employee apply for a Ph.D. Fellowship?
A: IBM Ph.D. Fellowships are not intended for IBM employees. IBM employees have an education reimbursement/leave program at their disposal and employees must work with their managers on eligibility for IBM assistance.
Q: Does the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship continue until the Award Recipient finishes the Ph.D.?
A: IBM Ph.D. Fellowships are awarded for one academic year. After receiving an award, an Award Recipient may be re-nominated the following year for consideration to receive another IBM Ph.D. Fellowship based on the student's continued exceptional academic standing, progress, achievement, and sustained interaction with IBM's technical community. A student may compete annually and be awarded a maximum of three years.
Q: Why do Nominees need to indicate a particular technical career interest?
A: The IBM Ph.D. Fellowship holds significant opportunities for Ph.D. students to interact with a wide range of IBM technical people. By stating whether the Nominee's technical interests are more aligned with activities in IBM Research, within an IBM product or technology development laboratory, or in the IBM Global Services arena, we can better match the Nominee to a suitable Mentor. We can also better plan an internship assignment that benefits the student's thesis research.
Q: What are the focus areas that IBM pays special attention to?
A: IBM pays special attention to an array of focus areas, including but not limited to:
- Technology that creates new business value
Optimization, risk and compliance, business intelligence, information-based medicine, services and software to improve business performance, social networking, information-based medicine and health care management, modeling and data analysis, workforce-based supply chains, Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME), tools for globalization - Innovative software
HCI, new expressive ways of manipulating computers, programming models and tools, language understanding, ontologies, real-time system, real-world-aware systems, intelligent imbedded systems, event-driven computing, Web 2.0, 3D Internet - New types of computers
Use of massive parallelism for non-scientific /engineering applications (including those applications), ell/multi-core and hybrid systems, green computing, 3D systems and integration, nanotechnology and post-CMOS devices for digital logic, memory, and communications - Interdisciplinary projects that create social and business value
Water and energy modeling and management, management of computer centers virtualization, autonomic computing, cloud computing, Internet data centers, green systems/data centers, green computing.
Q: Is the internship mandatory?
A: The internship is not mandatory, but it is encouraged. Many IBM Ph.D. Fellowship interns tell us that the internships help them to understand the industrial research, development environment or services arena, which helps in making better career decisions. It also broadens their range of technical contacts and strengthens their technical experience.
Q: How are IBM Ph.D. Fellowship recipients selected?
A: Award Recipients will be selected based on their overall potential for research excellence, the degree to which their technical interests align with those of IBM, and their progress to-date, as evidenced by publications and endorsements from their faculty advisor and department head. Preference will be given to students who have had an IBM internship, or have closely collaborated with technical or services people from IBM, or have co-authored papers, or have faculty research advisors who are close IBM collaborators.
Q: How will I know if my Nominee is awarded an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship?
A: The final award recipients will be finalized in mid-February 2010. All nominations will receive an email shortly thereafter of their nomination status. A formal letter of congratulations will be sent to the award winners within a few weeks after the emails are sent.
Q: Are IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award Recipients expected to submit a report at the end of the academic year?
A: No. There is no requirement for Award Recipients to document their activities while holding an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship. However, a nomination for award renewal would be greatly strengthened by a summary of achievements made under the previous year's Award.
Q: What if I have more questions?
A: Address all questions to phdfellow@us.ibm.com. You will receive an answer within two business days.