Dowd-ICES Fellowship Application Instructions

The Philip and Marsha Dowd Engineering Seed Fund was established in 2001 through a generous gift to the College of Engineering (CIT) from Philip and Marsha Dowd. This fellowship grant program, administered through ICES, plans to award up to four fellowships for the academic year 2009-2010 to CIT doctoral graduate students. The fund is intended to provide support for graduate students proposing work on cutting edge research projects that currently do not have other sources of funding. The objective of the fund is to help enable future external research funding and possible future entrepreneurial activity by generating initial research results through the seed project. Students receiving fellowships are referred to as Dowd-ICES Fellows and are required to present a seminar to the Carnegie Mellon community in the fall semester on the results of their work. Normally, funding for research projects is limited to one year, covering the student’s stipend and tuition. Faculty advisors of Dowd-ICES Fellows are required to provide follow-on information semi-annually, which is used to track outcomes stemming from the Fellowships.

Eligibility:

Students must be currently in their second or third year of their graduate studies (students would be Fellows during their third or fourth year). Doctoral students holding their masters degree and currently in their first year of their graduate studies are also eligible (these students would be Fellows during their second year).


Applications must include:

  1. Proposal describing the research project on which the student is/will be working; limited to 3 pages, 12 point font, and should adhere to the following format:


    • Project Title
    • Research Team (Faculty Adviser(s), Graduate Student) – names and affiliations
    • Project Description – describe problem addressed and why this research is both important and novel
    • Approach and Methodology – describe what research is planned during the year and how it will be accomplished
    • Relationship to CIT/ICES Strategic Focus – describe how the research fits into CIT strategic initiatives (http://www.cit.cmu.edu/about_cit/initiatives.html) or ICES research initiatives, outlined in ICES centers & clusters (http://www.ices.cmu.edu/what_we_do.html)
    • Present and Future Funding – briefly identify present research and sources of funding for the applicant (if any), identify potential future funding sources for the proposed project, and describe how this seed project will enable this future funding


  2. One-page Curriculum Vitae of the student (including semester graduate studies began at Carnegie Mellon, e.g., Fall 2006) and current grade-point average at Carnegie Mellon;
  3. Recommendation letter from faculty advisor that provides information on the quality of the applicant.

Determining factors for proposal selection:

a) Innovative nature of the proposed research in emerging areas, b) Its relationship to CIT/ICES strategic focus, and c) Potential of this seed project to enable government and/or industry support in future years.

CIT faculty are invited to submit proposals electronically to Alicia Brown at adbrown@andrew.cmu.edu by May 1, 2009. Fellowship selections will be announced the first week of June 2009 with a start date in August 2009, to be determined. If you have inquires regarding this call for proposals please contact ICES Director Gary Fedder at 8-8443 or fedder@ece.cmu.edu..