Graduate Thesis and Dissertation Resilience Fellowship

Competition Call for FALL 2026

The Center for Resiliency (CfR) is looking to support Doctoral Dissertations and Master Thesis research. Graduate students applying for this fellowship must have passed the proposal defense and be granted the degree candidacy status by their academic departments.

Doctoral candidates must be in the final steps of their dissertation research and planning to graduate in December 2026.

Master students who have chosen the thesis research option are planning to graduate in December 2026 are eligible to apply. Master students who are not conducting thesis research are not eligible to apply.

The deadline to apply for the Fall 2026 Graduate Fellowship is Monday May 1st, 2026. The winners of this competition will be announced by May 21, 2026. The Fellowship starts on September 1, 2026, and ends on December 31, 2026. Financial Award: $ 4800 (Thesis) and $ 7200 (Dissertations)

Graduate Fellowship program at the CfR offers an opportunity for graduate students to conduct research and collaborate with faculty and staff researchers. Graduate Fellows gain practical research experience and enhance their research for direct impact skills. Graduate Fellows participate and contribute actively in CfR research activities. Fellows use CfR sources for their data collection, analysis, reports, and findings. Fellows will present their research at the CfR, write an expert commentary to be published at the CfR webpage, and acknowledge the CfR support in their Thesis and Dissertation publication.

The CfR encourages research topics that come from all academic disciplines and research traditions. Since the students have already gained candidacy and the academic quality of their proposal is successfully evaluated by their thesis and dissertation committees, the main criterion for the CfR Graduate Fellowship is its’ application to the SETX community resilience.

The evaluation of applications for this fellowship is based, primarily, on how well the student ‘s research contributes to mitigating, handling, managing, and improving how SETX deals with natural disasters and human-made crises. The applicant must provide clear and full rationale on how various organizations, institutions, and communities are better off utilizing their expected research findings.

Application Deadline: Those interested must apply before May 1st, at Competition Space. All the required documents, including the two Letters of Reference, must be received by the due date. The application requires the following documents:

1. Application letter, where the graduate students explain how their research fits into a resiliency scope.
2. A synopsis (summary) of your Thesis or Dissertation Proposal, with an expected finish timeline.
3. CV
4. Two Letters of support: one from the Graduate Coordinator indicating the applicant’s degree candidacy status, and one from their thesis/dissertation academic advisor. 

Submit all the required documents on Competition Space by due date. The acknowledgment of the following statement is required for the application to be completed:

[I confirm I have not uploaded to any third-party tool and have not used a generative AI tool to produce this reviewer report.]