Scholarships:
Master's and PhD in Natural Language Processing

6 years of research without worrying about money

Not a loan • No additional workload • Guaranteed by the Government

Alexander Gelbukh

Where to study Master's or PhD abroad? How to study in the Americas? Where to study natural language processing or artificial intelligence? How to publish in top journals? Where to get good scholarship for Master's or PhD? Looking for fully funded Master's or PhD position? We offer scholarships for graduate students in computer science, scholarships for international students, and scholarships for women.

The Natural Language Processing Laboratory of the Center for Computing Research (CIC) of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), Mexico City, Mexico, offers a limited number of scholarships to international students for earning Master's or PhD degree in Computer Science with a thesis in the area of Natural Language Processing. After earning a Master's degree, the students are encouraged to apply for the PhD level, and (if they pass; usually they do) the scholarship is extended accordingly.

Topics include, but are not limited to, all areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computational Linguistics (CL), Human Language Technologies (HLT), and related areas. See our publications and defended theses for examples of our research interests.

Amount of scholarship: Master's 600 USD, PhD: 800 USD per month approx (including vacations; here can be updated info in Spanish). This is more than enough for normal living and renting a room in Mexico City. The scholarship is not a loan: you are not expected to return it; no service (such as teaching assistance) is required. More details on it can be found in my presentation about our scholarships.

Duration: Master's: up to 2 years (usually extendable to 2.5 years), PhD: up to 4 years.

Type of program: Research. Both programs are oriented to scientific research and publication rather than to improving your programming skills.

Employment: Most of our PhD graduates are employed in academia and governmentally funded research, though there are success stories of employment in top companies. Our MSc students typically continue to the PhD level; those that decided not to continue, are employed in academia or industry.

Admission: see a description of our admission procedure, but please read on; you will find the same link at the bottom of this page.

More details: see my presentation on our scholarships (and here in Spanish), in which I give some calculations, comment on whether the country is dangerous (no, it is not!), and present details about our NLP Laboratory.

Why study at the CIC-NLP Lab?

• Scholarship: Our students receive very attractive scholarship, completely enough to live in the country, to save some money, and to send money to the family abroad.
• Excellence: Both our PhD and Master's programs are on the list of very few programs in Mexico certified by the Government as international-level excellence programs.
• (coming soon) European or Asian university diploma via our double degree programs: you get our scholarship but are graduated from a European or Asian university with which we have double graduation agreement (this option is now in process of formalization and may not yet be available).
• Leadership: CIC is an elite research center, the leading national research center in Computer Science and probably the best Computer Science research center in Latin America (except maybe Brazil).
• Future: Almost all of our PhD graduates are lecturers or researchers in good universities, some with  post-doctorate degree. Most of them have achieved for their productivity an important certification of  National Researcher of Mexico. Many of our Master's graduates continue to study for  PhD degree, some with us and some in Europe, e.g., in UK or France.
• Awards: Many of our students received  important awards; four of them received a  Gold Medal from the hands of the President of the country and one even received the Microsoft Research Latin America Fellowship.
• Contacts: We actively collaborate with excellent research groups in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• Opportunities: Many of our students have passed internships at Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo!, Xerox, etc., as well as universities in US, UK, Canada, Austria, Greece, Singapore, etc. We give funding for internships at best international universities.
• Winning: Our students have won international competitions of systems and algorithms.
• Advisors: Our professors have excellent publication record, are academicians of the Mexican Academy of Science and  National Researchers of Mexico at the excellence levels 3 (highest), and have also received important awards.
• Funding: Our students are provided funding for attending conferences (local and in some cases abroad), as well as for publishing in top journals that require payment.
• Activities: Our students participate in organization of large international conferences such as CICLing or MICAI and help their advisors in other important activities, such as editing prestigious journals: CyS, IJCLA, POLIBITS, of which professors of our Laboratory are Editors-in-Chief.
• Multicultural environment: We have a wonderful international team of professors and students. Our PhD program has or has had professors from and our Laboratory has or has had students from . Our professors are supervising or have supervised theses in .
• Language: Within the Lab, we use English for communication. There is no need to learn the local language. However, if your language is Spanish, you will also learn to use English, with a variety of accents, in everyday communication, not just in the class.
• Equal opportunities: We have had many female students, many of which have won important awards. Some of our best students are of African descent. We have had students with physical disabilities, for whom our building has accessible infrastructure.
• Religious pluralism: We have had many students (and some teachers) from the Muslim world, both female and male ones. We are constantly working to provide environment comfortable for Muslim students, as well as students from all other cultures.
• Infrastructure: We have a number of servers with modern GPUs for deep-learning research. The school has a large GPU cluster, which we actively use.
• Friendly atmosphere: Our professors are helpful and our students are friendly; we all are good friends.
• Freedom: Our students choose the topic they like; we will adapt to your interests. We are also liberal as to attending, days or exams, etc.
• Tourism: Mexico is a very interesting and exotic country, rich in history, culture, and nature. Come to see something different from your home place!
• Eternal summer: In the middle of winter frosts in the North, you will enjoy sun and palms. Never cold and almost never too hot.
• Need more reasons? Come and find out for yourself.

Objectives

Master's:

• Publications in important conferences and journals.
• International research stays in top universities and companies.
• Obtaining a diploma of a European or Asian university via a double degree program (expected).
•  Honors degree and institutional or national awards.
•  Upon graduation, entering a PhD program, with us or in other leading universities.

PhD:

• Strong publication record in top journals.
• International research stays in top universities and companies.
• Obtaining a diploma of a European or Asian university via a double degree program (expected).
•  Honors degree and other national and international awards.
•  Upon graduation, obtaining the title of National Researcher of Mexico or equivalent in your country.

Requirements

• Strong interest, self-motivation, independence in learning and research.
• Research interest specifically in Natural Language Processing or related areas, according to the research topic you suggest.
• Absolute determination to finish the program: once admitted, you must finish the program and receive the degree.
• Programming or scripting skills (application level) are required, though in case of PhD could be waived, with willing to learn a programming language such as Python.
• Familiarity with basics of computer science, such as data structures, algorithms, programming languages; good knowledge of programming techniques is a big plus.
• Good knowledge of English: reading and writing in scientific-technical domain.
• Willing to publish scientific papers in top journals. Willing to acquire writing and publication culture. For PhD, publication in ISI JCR-indexed journals is required for graduation.
• Willing to participate in the activities of the Lab, such as organization of conferences, and in general willing to help is a plus.
• Willing to learn some Spanish words is a plus: it would simplify your life here. Knowing Spanish in advance is not required.
• Patience: applying for an international program may require considerable paperwork, including certified translations, etc.
• Finished previous degree with good scores: for Master's, finished BSc degree; for PhD, finished Master's degree (though strong candidates might be admitted with BSc degree).

Convinced. What's the next step?

Contact a professor who you prefer to have as advisor: Alexander Gelbukh, Grigori Sidorov, Ildar Batyrshin, or Hiram Calvo (choose only one; if we discover that you applied to more than one without clearly notifying both of them of this fact, you will be rejected immediately).

Please use the Subject line "Prospective PhD student" or "Prospective MSc student" as applicable. Messages with a different Subject line might be lost.

Please include:

• CV with your complete publication record (if any) and skills (if any), among other relevant data. Attaching the previous degree's certificate and score transcripts would be useful.
• Motivation:
• Why do you want to work in the area of NLP? What do you know about it, or what is your experience in related topics?
• Why specifically do you want to study at CIC? What do you expect from it?
• What are your plans after you graduate? For example, if you apply for Master's, do you plan to continue to PhD?
• Look at our awards page; will your name shine on it at some moment? How will you help us to further improve the share of our students getting honors and awards?
• Topic: do you have any specific idea for your thesis? If so, please give us some details. A separate document with a research proposal is a plus, especially for PhD, but can be done later.

If we confirm that we consider you a strong candidate, please follow the steps outlined in my description of our admission procedure (currently I wrote it mostly for PhD level; ask us for instructions for MSc). Please feel free to contact us if in doubt.

Questions: Alexander Gelbukh. See this information in other languages.