2021 Two-Year Worldwide IBM PhD Fellowship for the academic years of 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 is now open for applications. Strong collaboration with faculty, students and universities is vital to IBM. The IBM PhD Fellowship 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:

• Hybrid Cloud
• Quantum Computing / Quantum Systems
• Artificial Intelligence
• Cloud / Open Source Technologies
• Security / Cyber Security
• Data Science
• Systems

The 2021 two-year IBM PhD Fellowships are awarded worldwide.

• • U.S. country awards are $60,000 in award year one and $35,000 in award year two.
  • Other country awards vary between $6,000-$25,000 each award year depending on the country.

Additional Information:

Students must be nominated by a doctoral faculty member. The nominator provides the supporting documentation (resume, list of publications, thesis topic, etc.), categorizes the student's initial career interests, and submits the nomination for evaluation.

All IBM PhD Fellowship awardees are matched with an IBM mentor according to their technical interests and are encouraged to participate in an internship at least once while completing their studies. 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.

Students should have three years remaining in their graduate program at the time of nomination. For example, nominees that are enrolled in a four-year graduate program should have completed two years of their graduate program as of summer 2021 in order to benefit the most.

IBM has received many outstanding and exceptional candidates from universities all over the world in the past and encourages universities to submit nominations by October 23, 2020.

The IBM PhD Fellowship program also supports long-standing commitment to workforce diversity and encourages nominations of women, minorities and all who contribute to that diversity. The program seeks to increase the number of under-represented minority students in the referenced science topics of interest by encouraging a diverse applicant pool. 

For additional program details and FAQs, please visit www.ibm.com/university/phdfellowship or contact phdfellow@us.ibm.com.