InterRidge Student and Postdoctoral Fellowships - Call for proposals 2015

The InterRidge Office at Peking University, China, is pleased to announce the launch of the 2015 Student and Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme. As part of InterRidge’s mission to promote international, collaborative, and interdisciplinary studies of oceanic spreading centers, we invite proposals for InterRidge Student and Postdoctoral Fellowships of up to $5000 US each. These Fellowships are designed to encourage international collaboration on any aspect of ridge-crest science by graduate students or postdoctoral researchers, fostering long-standing partnerships for their future careers. The Fellowships can be used for any field of ridge-crest science. In particular these awards are encouraged to be used for international cruise participation, international laboratory use, and adding an international dimension to the Fellow’s research.

We expect to offer a number of Fellowships in 2015. According to our new policy. Those funded by InterRidge are open to graduate students or postdocs from or are going to priciple member countries. There are also three Fellowships being funded by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) Endowment Fund, with the requirement that the graduate student or postdoc is either from a developing country or will assist in training those of a developing country.The ISA Endowment Fund is a programme for collaborative marine scientific research, with details and brochure available at:http://www.isa.org.jm/en/efund/. The mission of the ISA Endowment Fund is to support the participation of qualified scientists and technical personnel from developing countries in marine research activities and to provide opportunities for collaboration by these persons. For more information on the partnership with the ISA for the InterRidge Student and Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme, please see: http://www.interridge.org/isapartnership

To read about previous InterRidge Student Fellows, please see:

2008; 2009; 2010; 2011; 2012;2013;2014

Required Application Materials (all necessary forms can be found at the end of this page):

ALL applications:
InterRidge Fellowship Application Form (at end of page) which includes:
- application summary
- proposal
- curriculum vitae (submit as a separate attachment)
- budget and justification of required funds
- recommendation letters from the applicant’s advisor and proposed host sponsor.

Applicants wishing to be considered by the ISA Endowment Fund must complete ADDITIONAL documents to the above:

-ISA Endowment Fund Application Form  (This form is a Microsoft Word document. Please contact the InterRidge Coordinator if you need this form in a different format or file type).

- any additional CV’s for developing country personnel.

Amount and Duration of Fellowship
The amount awarded to each successful applicant will be determined based on the project needs and is up to $5000 US per Fellowship. The Fellowship must be used within 2 years (24 months) from the date the Fellowship is awarded.

Proposal and Application Review
Research proposals will be reviewed for scientific merit by two topic-relevant reviewers, one a native- and the other a non-native English speaker. Depending on the number of applications received, each InterRidge Steering Committee Member will review all or a subset of applications (including proposal reviews). All applications will then be ranked together, based on several factors ranging from the quality and expected significance of the work to the Fellowship providing an opportunity that the applicant is otherwise not likely to experience.

For InterRidge-funded Fellowships, final selection will be made by the InterRidge Steering Committee. For the three Fellowships to be funded by the ISA Endowment Fund, the InterRidge Steering Committee will provide the highest-ranked of these applications to the ISA Endowment Fund Advisory Panel for final selection. All successful Fellows will be announced mid-Aug 2015.

Award Reporting Requirements
IR Fellows will be featured on our website and in the annual InterRidge News. Fellows will be required to submit one interim progress report and one final report upon completion of the Fellowship. Note: Fellowships supported by the ISA Endowment Fund will also require a final report from the applicant’s advisor. In addition, four years after the award, InterRidge will request feedback from awardees to provide an assessment of longer-term impacts of the Fellowship.

SUMMARY OF APPLICATION FORMS TO BE SENT TO THE IR COORDINATOR:

All applications must be completed in English, but there are translations of the application form for reference:

Chinese; French; German; Japanese; Korean; Spanish

Thank you, and good luck!
If you have questions, please contact Debbie Milton (coordinator@interridge.org)