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Innovation Fellowship 2013

QInF: Austria

We have immensely enjoyed running QInF in 2012, meeting all of the finalists, and collaborating with the winners. We look forward to its expansion for 2013: Imperial College of London, EPFL, Technical University of Dresden, and Eurecom are joining the Universities taking part in QInF 2012: Cambridge University, ETH Zürich, and Technical University of Munich.

Qualcomm's three European research centres in Cambridge, Vienna and Nuremburg, will run their own fellowship programs and the details on this page relate to QInF in Austria (for PhD students at ETH Zürich and EPFL (Lausanne)).

A large number of Qualcomm research engineers participate in carefully reviewing all the proposals and selecting the QInF Finalists, who are then invited to present their proposals to a panel of executive judges. Each winning student receives a €10,000 Fellowship for the upcoming academic year. For 2013, three Fellowships will be awarded at selected departments. Furthermore, we assign a Qualcomm researcher as mentor to each winning student, to facilitate close collaboration and interaction with Qualcomm Corporate Research & Development.

For a list of previous years' winners see here: 2012 (Cambridge, Vienna).

Application
Finalists
Winners
FAQs

We believe that research and development is the key to harnessing the power of imagination and to discovering new possibilities. The Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship promotes our core values of innovation, execution and partnership and our goal is to enable students to pursue their futuristic innovative ideas.

Qualcomm is inviting applications for the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship 2013 from outstanding PhD students in the following departments/divisions at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne:

We will be awarding fellowships to THREE winning students for the 2013–14 academic year.

Each of the three winning students will be awarded a €10,000 fellowship for submitting the most innovative proposals. The respective academic departments at each university will administer funds to the winning students for their fellowship work and research expenses for the academic year of 2013–14. Total funding for three students x €10,000 each = €30,000.

The following shows a set of focus areas for this year, but outstanding proposals in other areas will be considered as well:

  • Augmented Reality
  • Camera tracking (SLAM, etc.)
  • Person/Face detection and tracking
  • Use of sensors and hybrid approaches
  • Optimization techniques for mobile devices
  • 3D model acquisition
  • Image/Video based rendering
  • Coherent rendering
  • Object recognition
  • Gesture recognition
  • Interaction techniques
  • Computational Photography

Note: We also welcome proposals in other areas since we are very keen to learn about things we do not know!

Timeline

  • Application deadline is February 25, 2013
  • Finalists will be announced on March 25, 2013
  • Final presentations submitted: April 8, 2013, 11 pm
  • Finalists presentations: mid-to-late-April (exact date to be announced)
  • Winners Announcement: May, 2013 (exact date to be announced)

Application Process

The main judging criterion is an innovation proposal that must include:

  • Introduction and problem definition
  • Innovation proposal and relation to the state of the art
  • The one year horizon of the project (even if the proposal is a multi-year project)
  • The strength of the student for achieving the proposal milestones.

See FAQ for more details.

Winners will be selected through a two phase application process:

  1. Finalists selection: applications must be submitted by the deadline above. Each application must include (in PDF or Word format):
    • Three page proposal summarizing your innovative idea
    • Letter from one or more faculties recommending the innovation
    • Signed copy of the official rules document
    • Student’s CV
    • Above information should be sent in a single zip file to:
  2. Winners selection: finalist must prepare a 15 minute presentation for the judges. Presentation must be in PowerPoint or PDF format. The presentation generally includes:
    • The idea
    • The differentiating factors from state of the art
    • The execution plan / strength of the student

The official rules for the innovation fellowship are available for download.

Please check back to this page regularly for application and program updates.

Faculty & Mentor

In addition to the faculty advisor(s) to guide the fellowship research, Qualcomm will also provide industry experts to mentor the students, as well as regular collaboration opportunities with Qualcomm Research & Development to further assist with projects. Successful projects will be reevaluated after one year for further research funding from Qualcomm.

More Info?

Do you need further Information? Please direct your questions to innovation.fellowship.austria@qti.qualcomm.com

QInF 2013 Finalists

To be announced.

QInF 2013 Winners

To be announced.

Application Rules

Can students without advisors participate?

Are newly admitted students eligible to apply for the fellowship?

Are there any citizenship or permanent residency requirements?

Can Visiting Scholars or Post Docs be applicants?

Can the same student submit two applications?

Is there a preference/requirement on the seniority of the students?

Are there any enrollment requirements?

Proposal

What does "innovation proposal" mean?

What size of proposal do you expect?

Who owns the intellectual property from the applications?

Who owns the intellectual property developed during the course of the Fellowship?

Does the proposal have to be the same as the research plan for your Ph.D. under your supervisor for the next year? i.e. can the proposal be for a project that is not your main area of research?

If the winning proposal is for a non-primary research project, how many hours of work per week do you expect the winners to spend on their projects?

Is there any preference on incremental vs. long-term ideas?

Should the proposed ideas be commercializable?

Are proposal outside of the listed areas acceptable?

Can the recommending faculty be from another university?

What should be the scope of the recommendation letter from the faculty?

Should recommendation letters be confidential?

Any requirements on length of recommendation letters?

Can Qualcomm release the proposals of the past winners?

Awards

What is the judging process?

How many Fellowships will be awarded?

What happens if the applicant already has a fellowship?

Do funds expire after 1 year?

Are proposals for projects aligned with Qualcomm’s business interests favored?

Afterwards

What will Qualcomm provide post-Fellowship?

Special instructions for previous QInF Applicants

Can previous QInF applicants apply again?

Can QInF applicants from previous years get feedback on their application?

Program Launch

  • Launch with e-mail & posters: Week of January 7, 2013
  • Info session at EPFL on January 17, 2013 and at ETHZ on January 18, 2013

Proposal Submission

  • Submissions due: Monday, February 25, 2013

Finalist Announcement

  • Finalist Announcement: March 25, 2013

Finalist Presentations

  • Deadline for slide submission: Monday, April 8, 2013
  • Finalist presentations: mid-to-late-April 2013

Winner Announcement

  • Public announcement of winners: May 2013