Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship
Region: Global
For eligible students at universities globally pursuing research aligned to Microsoft Research areas of focus.
Africa
For the purposes of this fellowship, those students submitting a proposal must attend a university in Africa.
Update: Microsoft Research is making changes to the PhD Fellowship program and will be pausing our call for proposals/nominations for the 2023 calendar year. We are exploring new avenues to invest in our academic partnerships and bring together students and researchers to collaborate, share knowledge, and pursue new research directions. To learn more about the recently announced Microsoft Research AI & Society Fellows program, uniting eminent scholars and experts to collaborate on research at the intersection of AI and society, visit our program page.
The 2022 PhD fellowship recipients have been announced.
Below you can find the details of the 2022 PhD fellowship cycle.
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- $15,000 USD is provided to help complete research as part of their doctoral thesis work for academic year 2022–23.
- Eligible recipients will be offered a 12-week paid internship with the Microsoft Africa Research Institute (MARI).
- Opportunities will be provided to build relationships with research teams at Microsoft and receive mentorship.
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- Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Students should support this mission and embrace opportunities to foster diverse and inclusive cultures within their communities.
- PhD students must be enrolled at a university in Africa
- Proposed research must be closely related to one of the themes at Microsoft Africa Research Institute (MARI)
- AI/ML/NLP/data science: In many practically useful applications, data is often scarce and biased. Understanding how we work under these settings and deliver useful results has a great impact for many practical problems and gives us deep insights into what it means to learn with data. From practical application such as NLP, to understanding the fairness and generality of results and deepening our understanding of what is feasible with the available data for a particular problem. We’re interested how we work better with the limitations of data.
- Health: Advances in machine learning and AI offer us an opportunity to address the disparities in the access to, and delivery of quality healthcare for all people. We’re interested in understanding and exploring spaces where technology can assist to fill the gap, from assisting healthcare practitioners to perform their roles more effectively, to bridging the last mile to patients, through scaling the delivery and reach of quality healthcare using technology.
- Sustainability: Microsoft’s commitment to sustainability will be achieved by leveraging cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to transform the way we monitor, model and ultimately help in solving environmental challenges facing the globe. Within MARI, we are applying AI and analytics to understand and develop solutions that will address challenges related to sustainability. If you are a student enrolled in an African University undertaking a PhD program in artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics or a related field with a focus on solving problems related to sustainability, we would be delighted to receive your application.
- Human-computer interaction: We seek fellows in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) who will explore Usability and Design questions under the areas of Work, Health and Sustainability & Society. Typically, HCI interns lead and conduct research studies (online or on the ground), usability studies, literature reviews, and design interventions.
- Students must be in their second year or beyond of their PhD program sometime between August 2022 – July 2023 having taken into account transfers, approved leaves of absence, etc.
- PhD students must continue to be enrolled at the university in the beginning of academic year 2023 or forfeit the award (i.e. entering their third year of beyond of their program).
- Fellowships are not available for extension. If you require time away for family or medical leave, this will be accommodated. If you are unsure if a particular need for time away will affect the award, you can contact Microsoft Research Fellowships at msfellow@microsoft.com.
- Payment of the award, as described above, will be made directly to the university and dispersed according to the university’s policies. Microsoft will have discretion as to how any remaining funds will be used if the student is no longer qualified to receive funding (e.g., if the student unenrolls from the program, graduates, or transfers to a different university).
- Funding is for use only during the recipient’s time in the PhD program; it cannot be used for support in a role past graduation, such as a postdoc or faculty position. Those interested in receiving this fellowship will need to confirm their PhD program starting month and year, as well as their expected graduation month and year.
- A recipient of the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship subject to disciplinary proceedings for inappropriate behavior, including but not limited to discrimination, harassment (including sexual harassment), or plagiarism will forfeit their funding.
- PhD students submitting a proposal should be able to communicate about their research (both in writing and verbally) in English.
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Proposals and letters of recommendation for the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship were accepted through June 7, 2022 at 7:00 PM UTC. The below outlines the information necessary to submit your proposal in our submission portal.
You will be asked to answer the below questions in a form:
- Your name, email, country, university, and department
- Primary area of research (from those listed below)
- AI/ML/NLP/data science
- Health
- Sustainability
- Human-computer interaction
- Thesis proposal or research statement title
- Month and year entered the PhD program and expected graduation date (you must be entering your second year or beyond sometime between August 2022 – July 2023)
- URL to your professional website (optional, but strongly recommended; you are encouraged to make certain it is up-to-date)
- One to three academic conferences you are most likely to attend
- Self-assessment of the Statement of Good Standing: “I declare I have never been disciplined for inappropriate behavior, including, but not limited to discrimination, harassment (including sexual harassment), or plagiarism. If I am selected to receive funding under Microsoft’s Fellowship program, during my funding time period, I agree to inform Microsoft should I be subjected to disciplinary proceedings for inappropriate behavior, including but not limited to discrimination, harassment (including sexual harassment), or plagiarism which would result in forfeiture of funding under Microsoft’s Fellowship program.”
You will be asked to upload 3 documents:
Your curriculum vitae, thesis proposal or research statement, and one-page summary will be uploaded separately. Proposals must be submitted in English, and accepted formats are docx, doc, and pdf. Email or hard-copy submissions will not be considered. Name the individual files using the convention indicated below. Include your first name and last name as part of your file name each separated by an underscore (e.g. Jane_Smith_cv.docx).
- Curriculum vitae – file name: cv
- Thesis proposal or research statement (short and concise is recommended—no more than two pages including references with font no smaller than 10-point) – file name: thesis
- Summary of the above thesis proposal or research statement (no more than 150 words; font no smaller than 10-point) – file name: summary
You will be asked to request 2 letters of recommendation (third one being optional) via the submission portal:
- Add the contact information (name, affiliation, email) and send the email request through the submission portal to your two or three recommenders as soon as possible so they have ample time to provide a letter. Their deadline is the same as your proposal deadline on June 7, 2022 at 7:00 PM UTC. They should be established researchers familiar with your research (at least one of which must be from your primary academic advisor/supervisor and only one letter can be from a current Microsoft employee). Once you send the request through the submission portal, they will receive a private link to upload a letter of recommendation for you. Please note that you and your recommenders may need to check your junk folders in order to find emails from our portal. As reference, here is a list of the various system email addresses (opens in new tab) you can add to allowed emails.
Microsoft cannot assume responsibility for the confidentiality of information submitted in the proposals. Therefore, proposals should not contain information that is confidential, restricted, or sensitive. Microsoft reserves the right to make public the information on those proposals that receive awards, except those portions containing budgetary or personally identifiable information.
Incomplete proposals will not be considered.
Due to the volume of submissions, Microsoft cannot provide individual feedback on proposals.
For questions regarding proposals, contact Microsoft Research Fellowships at msfellow@microsoft.com.
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Eligibility questions
Can EMEA PhD Scholars submit a proposal for this fellowship?
Yes, Microsoft EMEA PhD Scholars may submit a proposal for this fellowship.
What if I’m a student attending a university outside of Africa?
Students outside of Africa are not eligible for this program.
What if I am not in my second year or beyond during the submission period?
Students must be entering their second year or beyond of their PhD program sometime between August 2022 – July 2023 having taken into account transfers, approved leaves of absence, etc.
In what language should the proposal be submitted?
All documents should be in English.
Thesis proposal or research statement
Are there specific pieces of information I am required to include in my research statement (i.e. research aims, timelines, deliverables) or are you looking for more of a narrative, descriptive format of a student’s plan for their doctoral research?
Your research statement should be more of a narrative format. Timelines and deliverables are not necessary. We want to see what you are interested in, where your work is going, and how you would use this fellowship to further your research and contribute to the academic community.
What sort of balance is expected between what we have done, what we are doing, and what we are planning on doing?
When reviewing a proposal, we are looking for more of a future plan. Your research papers tell us what you have done, use the research statement to tell us where you are going.
If we have just submitted a paper that is going to guide a lot of direction going forward, would you recommend submitting that as preliminary data or attaching an unpublished paper to the proposal?
If it is relevant, and all co-authors approve of you submitting the unpublished work, we recommend including this in your submission by providing a link in your proposal to the information housed online somewhere like OneDrive (do not add pages to your proposal). Again, all papers should be approved by all-co-authors, for both published and unpublished works.
Should the summary research statement be a short synopsis of the two-page research statement, or should they contain distinctively different content?
The summary research statement and the two-page research statement should not contain different content; one should be a shorter version of the other. The purpose of the shorter version is to help us triage where proposals go to get reviewed.
Should I be aware of formatting criteria while writing my research statement?
Your research statement should be no more than 2 pages including references with font no smaller than 10-point.
Letters of recommendation
My undergrad was in a different field so the research was very different from what I am doing now. Who should write my letters of recommendation?
Given you have two (with an option of three) letters, it would be good to include a letter from one person who can speak about your current research and one person who has known you longer, even if it may not be in your current research area. The longer-term perspective is definitely important and valuable. The value of a letter is evaluating how you work, how you collaborate with people, and what your process is as a researcher. This transcends what your particular topic is. Keep in mind that one letter doesn’t have to address all things; across all two or three letters, we want to get a full picture of who you are over a longer term, but also insight into your recent work.
Are you more interested in learning about technical and research specific aspects of my work, or are other things, such as outreach/other university activities of interest as well?
The purpose of a letter of recommendation is to provide us with the bigger picture of what you are doing, how you work as a researcher, how you learn, how you approach projects, and how you collaborate with others. The letter will also provide us with insight from people who have been working with you and observing you for some amount of time.
It was suggested that letters of recommendation come from established researchers. Is this limited to faculty members or would the inclusion of collaborators be acceptable as well?
At least one recommendation needs to come from an advisor/supervisor, but letters of recommendation from collaborators are allowed. We are looking for people who can speak to you, your work as a researcher, and your character.
For the letters of recommendation, is it a system where you list the people and your system will ask those people?
Those you provided as recommenders in our system will be sent an auto-generated email with instructions to upload their letters of recommendation.
Review process
How will proposals be judged?
Reviewers will rate proposals based on the technical/scientific quality and the potential impact of the proposed research.
Who will review the proposals?
Proposals will be reviewed by researchers at Microsoft.
What are you looking for in a proposal?
Accomplishment, impact, and alignment with the work that we are doing at Microsoft Research. Highlight papers you have published and any awards you have received. Describe the impact that your research will have on others and how this award will enable your research.
When will I know the outcome of the review process?
Students will be contacted by the end of September regarding the outcome of their submission. Due to the volume of submissions, Microsoft cannot provide individual feedback on proposals.
Award details
If selected, when will my fellowship begin?
Persons awarded a fellowship in October 2022 will receive their financial awards at the beginning of their fourth academic year or beyond. Microsoft sends the payment directly to the university, which then disperses funds according to its guidelines. For example, if your academic year begins in September, your university will receive your funding by September. If your academic year begins in March, your university will receive your funding by March.
Are there any tax implications for me if I receive this fellowship?
The tax implications for the fellowship are based on the policy at your university and applicable tax laws.
Will intellectual property be an issue if I am awarded a fellowship?
The Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship is not subject to any intellectual property (IP) restrictions.
Can I simultaneously receive fellowships from other companies?
If you accept a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship, you may receive another fellowship from another company or institution during the same academic period.
Am I required to accept the internship offer?
No. We offer it as part of the fellowship, but it is up to you if you wish to accept the internship.
Can I choose the team I want to intern with?
We will do our best to connect you with the researcher that you requested, but that cannot be assured.
If selected as a fellow for the academic year 2022-23, when can I intern with Microsoft Africa Research Institute (MARI)?
Internships are typically for 12 weeks. We will work with you to determine the optimal timing for your internship.
Is childcare an approved use of the fellowship?
Absolutely! There is no limit to the amount of your stipend that can be used for childcare.
For questions not found above, contact Microsoft Research Fellowships at msfellow@microsoft.com.