No, however, IBM may solicit local country residency and citizenship information for legal compliance purposes as part of the award process. IBM is a US headquartered company and complies with all applicable laws and regulations.

The nomination window for the 2024 PhD Fellowships will be open from July 15, 2024 through August 30, 2024 11:59PM Eastern Time. Please visit the IBM Fellowship Awards nomination portal to submit a nomination.

Students receiving a comparable fellowship, internship, or research funding from another company or institution (does not include academic scholarships) during the same IBM funded academic period are ineligible for an IBM PhD Fellowship. IBM reserves the right to revoke nominee’s eligibility and withdraw the funding of the PhD award upon knowledge of such award.

Please contact phdfellow@us.ibm.com with any questions.

During the nomination period, all nominations for the IBM PhD Fellowship must be submitted by faculty via the IBM Fellowship Awards nomination portal to facilitate an open and uniform competition.

Once access to the application is made, the application must be filled out in one session.

PhD Nominee information

• Name, Department, Academic or professional website, phone, university name, country, entry date into the program, expected graduation date, current completed degree.
• Visa status if applicable, or U.S. citizen.
• Google Scholar publications and citations, latest completed degree, career goal (professional researcher, professor, etc.).
• Interest in an IBM internship, list of all IBM activities (communities, sponsored collaborations, activities, conferences, courses, internships, presentations, events, promotions, products, services, etc.) with which the student has engaged).
• Student Curriculum Vitae (CV) — limit three pages.
• PhD Project or Dissertation Title, with a description (2,000 characters or less) that should be organized into sections: Research Question or Hypothesis, Methodology Summary, and Analysis.

Faculty Advisor Information

• Name, University, Department, Title, Professional/Academic Website that ties you to the university, phone, university email, university street address, country.
• Include an answer to, “There are many Fellowship programs available to students. Tell us what prompted you to nominate this student for the IBM PhD Fellowship Award?”.
• Evaluation of the student and list of personal attributes, accolades or awards.

Department Head Information

• Name, Dept, email, phone number.
• Short supporting statement that is customized to the student and not a boilerplate recommendation.

University Administrator Information

• Names and email of university administrator that process donations to the university; also university officials with signatory capacity.
• Privacy and Consent Statements for Faculty, Nominee, Department Head, and University Administrator. Once you gather all the information, and access the form, follow all the instructions. You will be allowed to cut and paste text into text fields. Stay away from highly formatted source material, .txt work the best.

The application is then put through a rigorous vetting process. You will send and receive information through your provided email address, which must contain a university domain address. If the nominated student is notified that they are being considered for an award, the faculty member must stay engaged to provide all due diligence material and documentation necessary to finalize the award.

A student does not submit any nomination or documentation to IBM; only faculty may nominate students. Students are encouraged to provide preparation material to the nominating faculty member. See the list of application contents under the FAQ, “What preparation is necessary before a faculty member fills out an application?”

The 2024 IBM PhD Fellowship begins in the fall semester of 2024 and covers the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 semesters. The associated internship may be a summer assignment 2025, or an on-site assignment during the academic year, depending on the arrangements made between the awardee, the IBM mentor, and the faculty advisor.

IBM employees, IBM supplemental employees and IBM contractors may not submit IBM PhD Fellowship nominations.

IBM employees are not eligible to be nominated for an IBM PhD Fellowship.

The internship is not guaranteed or mandatory, but IBM PhD Fellowship awardees are highly encouraged to apply for an internship position. Many IBM PhD Fellowship interns tell us that the internships help them to understand the industrial research, development or consulting services environments better, which then helps them in making better career decisions. It also broadens their technical network and strengthens their technical experience.

Award recipients will be selected based on their overall potential for research excellence, the degree to which their technical interests align with those of the IBM focus areas listed in the call, and their progress to-date, as evidenced by publications and endorsements from their faculty advisor and department head.

Award recipients will be finalized in 3Q-4Q 2024. A formal letter of congratulations will be sent to the award winners, but finalization of the award is contingent upon the faculty member engaging with IBM to complete all required due diligence documentation.

Information provided in the IBM PhD Fellowship application is used only to vet your application. The faculty member will be given an opportunity to consent to a privacy policy, and all nominees will also be asked to return a consent as well. Privacy is of utmost importance to us and records are retained as applicable to U.S. Tax regulations. To learn more about IBM's data privacy, read the IBM Fellowship Awards Privacy statement. For a particular inquiry please send an email to: phdfellow@us.ibm.com

Please note, because IBM PhD Fellowship awards to students are governed by US charitable giving rules and regulations, the recipient institutions will be required to provide additional documentation, e.g. bank statement, proof of non-profit / charitable organization status, IRS Form W-9/W-8.

The IBM PhD Fellowship payments are sent to the university no later than the last quarter of the year. The timing of the payment depends heavily on the engagement of the nominator and the university in returning all documentation expeditiously. Awards are payable to the university or foundation, not directly to the student awardee. All nominations must include contact information for a university finance administrator for the department (designated in the nomination form by the faculty advisor) who can confirm details for payment.

The IBM PhD Fellowship program may survey, arrange an outcomes call, or engage with the awardee’s mentor, the awardee, or the faculty for updates. The results and feedback are used to improve the program.

You may request a copy of the submitted nomination form from the faculty who submitted the nomination.

For questions not addressed here or on the program tab above, send an email to phdfellow@us.ibm.com.