The 2023 CMU Portugal Call for Affiliated Ph.D. Scholarships was featured in Jornal Económico Newspaper. The article presented an overview of the Affiliated Ph.D. Programs initiative through the perspective of CMU Portugal National Director, Inês Lynce and of two Affiliated Ph.D. candidates, Diogo Silva (FCT NOVA ) and Maria Eduarda Andrada (Universidade de Coimbra).
Diogo Silva shared that he was halfway through his Master’s thesis in Computer Engineering at FCT NOVA when he decided to apply to the Program: “I wanted the opportunity to have access to Carnegie Mellon University Professors and researchers, which is considered one of the best universities in the world for informatics and in particular in artificial intelligence applied to language, which is my research area”, explains the 24-year-old student. Under his Ph.D., Diogo expects to improve language generation approaches and help to break the human-machine gap in conversational agents. Encouraged by his supervisor at FCT NOVA, João Magalhães, a CMU Portugal supervisor and researcher, he pointed out “my scholarship allowed me to conduct research that otherwise would not be possible and has helped me to become more independent. The CMU Portugal Program opened new doors for me and facilitated the creation of new connections within my field of investigation”.
Diogo also has the opportunity to work in collaboration with the Portuguese Unicorn Company Farfetch under CMU Portugal’s large Scale project IFetch. Many of the selected students have the chance to cooperate with industry during their doctoral, which is, according to CMU Portugal National Co-Director Inês Lynce “one of the big advantages of these Ph.D. Programs”. “This initiative promotes a close connection between students and Portuguese ICT Companies. Even in the selection process we value candidates who present a work plan in collaboration with a company”, explains Inês.
Launched for the first time in 2021, the Affiliated Ph.D. Programs was created “to increase the number of scholarships and diversify CMU Portugal’s educational offer. Every student eligible for a Ph.D. in ICT-related areas from a Portuguese University can apply to these scholarships”, explained the Program’s Co-Director to Jornal Económico.
Maria Eduarda, an Affiliated Ph.D. candidate from Brazil in Electrical and Computer Engineering hosted at Universidade de Coimbra, shared her experience and reasons for choosing this Program “I applied because I believed that the partnership between a national university and one from the United States would provide me acomplete training in terms of soft skills and technical knowledge”. According to Maria “this Ph.D. already gave me a broad range of opportunities to connect with qualified professionals in my area of expertise, which I would not have had if only enrolled at the University of Coimbra.”
Link to the News article and pdf.
The 2023 Call for 12 Affiliated Ph.D. Scholarships is open until March 31.
More information here.
