Dorcas Muthoni PhD Fellowship 2020/2021 for Talented African Female Students – Spain

The Dorcas Muthoni PhD fellowship offered by the UPF in Spain, seeks doctoral applications from talented African female students.

Application Deadline: 4th June 2020

Eligible Countries: African countries

To Be Taken At (Country): Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain

About the Award: Dorcas Muthoni, a Kenyan engineer and entrepreneur, CEO and founder of the company Openworld, received our University’s highest recognition on 15th December 2017 for her significant work in the promotion of engineering studies among young women in Africa, the mentoring of young people, and her social commitment in the fight against poverty.

This new scholarship is aligned with the university’s institutional commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), in order to contribute to transform our world.

The main objectives of this new fellowship are:

• (i) to promote gender equality & contribute to reduce the gender gap in Information and Communication Technology – ICT; by facilitating more women pursuing scientific/technological/engineering careers and lowering the barriers women face when pursuing careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) disciplines.
• (ii) to share excellent research with African female researchers during their PhD Studies.  Our ICT department (DTIC) consists of more than 20 research groups who are very active in international research projects (i.e. currently active in 32 H2020 research projects, 9 of which are European Research Council grants) and nationally we have the Spanish research excellence seal Maria de Maeztu).
• (iii) to contribute to future social impact in African countries. The applicants are expected to return to their home countries after completion of their PhD studies, and to pursue a career related to ICT.

The Dorcas Muthoni PhD Fellowship will be part of the Doctoral programme in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), that covers many of the most important research topics in the information society grouped into four main areas: cognitive and intelligent systems, audiovisual technologies, networks and communications, and computational biology and biomedical systems.

Fields of Research: Students will pursue doctoral studies in one of the Research Areas of the department which include:

Cognition, Computation and Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Computer Science, Natural Language Processing, Ubiquitous Computing, Information Retrieval and Data Mining, Cognitive Multimedia Technologies, Image Processing and Computer Vision, Image Processing for Enhanced Cinematography, Sound and Music Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, Graphics and Educational Technologies, Network Technologies and Strategies, Wireless Communications, Information Theory and Coding, Computational Neuroscience, Instrumentation and Biomedical Electronics, Computational Imaging and Computational Physiology, Analysis of Biomedical Data and Non-Linear Signal Analysis.

Type: PhD, Fellowship

Eligibility:

• This new PhD fellowship seeks doctoral applications from talented African female students (only African nationality applicants will be considered) with strong research interests.
• Candidates for PhD positions must hold an M.Sc degree or equivalent.

Selection Criteria: 

• Excellent Academic record of the candidate
• Motivation letter:
  • candidates expected contribution to the promotion of ICT gender equality, including previous experience
  • future expected social impact (Africa), including previous experience

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: We offer a predoctoral contract with a minimum gross monthly salary of 1343€ for the first and second years, and a gross monthly salary of 1439€ for the third year.

Teaching. PRC includes a teaching assistance load of 45 hours per academic year.

Start-up Fund. The fellowship will also include a startup/Landing Fund to facilitate the fellow’s initial expenditure. The fund will be for the amount of 2000€.

We do not recommend to come to Spain accompanied by family members, since the scholarship offered has not been designed to include them and we cannot assure financial, logistical or administrative support to cover for the family members.

Fees covered by the fellowship (PRC- Predoctoral Research Contract)

The “Dorcas Muthoni” fellowships/PRC include the annual tutorship fees, but neither the administrative fees nor the fees for validations of degrees issued by a university outside the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) without homologation. Check here for further information. Fees covered by the fellowship (PRC)

Duration of Program:  Three years (with the possibility of one year extension), renewed annually.

How to Apply: We are listing below the two applications + motivation letter you need to complete when applying for this fellowship. Please note that both need to be completed at the same time:

1. Application to the UPF ICT PhD programme
   • Please read carefully the Eligibility requirements in this link
   • It is compulsory to submit in your application a support letter from your potential supervisor in DTIC.
   • Please complete this application form to the ICT PhD programme

2. Application to the Dorcas Muthoni PhD Fellowship

• Please complete this application form for the fellowship

3. Motivation letter

• The applicant should explain her motivation to apply to this fellowship and the expected impact after the end of her PhD studies in terms of the ICT gender equality and social impact in Africa.

   4. Digital copy of your Passport

• For any queries, please contact: phdprogram.ict@upf.edu

Visit Program Webpage for Details