ASEF Fellowship Program 2016

The American Slovenian Education Foundation (ASEF) fellowship program provides student financial support, allowing fellows to focus on their research. Fellowships build lasting relationships between ASEF and academic institutions. The purpose of the fellowship is to strengthen research and study exchange between Slovenia and the US with the objective of giving talented Slovenian students the ability to realize their potential to the fullest.

About the ASEF fellowship

The ASEF fellowship provides funding (travel, housing, and living expenses) for a 10 week summer research visit to a U.S. university or research institution in the area of applicant’s field of study/expertise.

Eligibility

Applications are open to full time Slovenian students enrolled in a higher education institution. Applications are open to Slovenian as well as Slovenian American students. A typical applicant is a senior undergraduate, masters, or junior PhD student.

Participating institutions

The fellowship provides funding for a 10 week summer research visit to the following research groups:

• Political and social studies:
  • Harvard University, dr. Peter Verovšek who works in international political theory. His research examines how socially mediated collective memories serve as resources for political innovation in the aftermath of broad historical ruptures. He is currently starting a new project examining flexible approaches to the implementation of the emerging global transitional justice norm. More here.
• Computer science:
  • University of Southern California, prof. Jernej Barbič who is looking for students with interests in numerical methods, computer graphics, fast physics, special effects for film, medical simulation, finite element methods, model reduction and control of nonlinear systems. More here.
  • Stanford University, prof. Jure Leskovec who focues on data science and modeling of human activity traces. Analysis of large social and information networks. Applications of recommender systems, machine learning and data mining to big data problems. More here.
  • University of California Berkeley, prof. Dawn Song who is looking for students focusing on computer security, including security and privacy issues in Web and mobile systems. Analysis of and defense against malicious code. Using program analysis, algorithms design, and machine learning for security and privacy. More here.
• Computational and molecular biology:
  • University of California, San Francisco, prof. Andrej Šali who works on projects that use large-scale computational models grounded in the laws of physics and evolution to study the structure and function of proteins. Develop methods for: Predicting the structures of proteins; Determining the structures of macromolecular assemblies; And, annotating the functions of proteins using their structures. More here.
  • University of California, San Francisco, prof. Matija Peterlin who works on molecular biology, immunology, virology and genetics to tackle intractable immunodeficiencies, be they the bare lymphocyte syndrome or AIDS. These approaches also find resonance in autoimmunity and cancer. More here.
• Physics:
  • University of California Berkeley, prof Uroš Seljak who works on theoretical, observational and numerical astrophysics and cosmology, and data mining of large cosmological observations and simulations of dark matter. More here.
• Mechanical Engineering:
  • Princeton University, prof Andrej Košmrlj who works on projects at the intersection of physics and mechanical engineering. Projects are focused on investigation mechanical meta-materials, mechanics of structures, nonlinear mechanics and mechanics of biomaterials. More here.

How to apply

Applications should include:

• Application form
• Curriculum Vitae with a focus on applicant’s research.
• Transcripts of applicant’s courses.
• A Research statement (no longer than 2 pages) that should include:
  • Previous research experience: list and describe all of your project/research work for courses, participation at research projects, lab work at your department, your independent research, relevant summer internship experience, etc.
  • A proposal for a project or an idea for your thesis/dissertation that you want to work on during your visit. Describe the project or the idea and argue why you find it interesting. Include list of scientific references related to your field of research.
• Two reference letters.
  • The letters should (among other things) clearly describe your contribution to the research projects you participated in.
  • The letters should be written by the supervisors/advisors of past past research projects, summer internships, or your diploma/msc thesis.

All documents (except reference letters) should be submitted by the candidates in the PDF format via the application page.  Letters of reference should be submitted by the reference letter writer at the reference application page.

The deadline for submitting all the documents is 31 March 2016.

If you have questions about the program or the application process, please contact ASEF at info@ase-fund.org.