Description
In 2016, we have three exciting fellowship programs open for applications that provide the opportunity for students, researchers, and software developers to spend from three months to up to one year at the Citizen Lab. Applicants can come from a variety of disciplines including technical or social science related backgrounds. Above all we seek team players who are dedicated, diligent, open minded to new perspectives, and eager and willing to learn.
Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellowship
Description: The Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellowship is an international leadership initiative that brings together the best emerging technology talent and research and civil society organizations to protect the open Web.
Compensation and Duration: The selected fellow will spend 10 months at the Citizen Lab starting in September 2016. The fellowship offers a grant of USD 60,000 paid in 10 monthly installments. The fellowship also offers other benefits and opportunities including a relocation and housing supplement, and travel funding for conferences and events. See the Mozilla fellowship website for details.
Who we are looking for: The Open Web Fellow can come from a range of backgrounds including software development, DevOps, security research, data science, and visualization. Experience and interest in networks and information security (e.g, cryptography, network measurement, penetration testing, reverse engineering, malware analysis, etc.) is of particular relevance to our projects, but is not necessarily required. Individuals who don’t have direct experience in our research areas but have solid backgrounds in networking, systems, information design, or data analytics and visualization can learn more about our subject matter as they progress through the fellowship with us.
Applications must be made on the Mozilla fellowship website by 11:59pm PST March 20, 2016.
Open Technology Fund Information Controls Fellowship
Description: The Information Controls Fellowship Program cultivates research, knowledge, and creative collaboration at different institutions and across disciplines on the topic of information controls. Specifically, the fellowship supports examination into how governments in regions or areas of OTF’s core focus (e.g., Africa, Asia, Middle East, and North Africa) are restricting the free flow of information, debilitating the open Internet, and are thereby threatening human rights and democracy.
Compensation and Duration: The Fellowship offers senior and seasonal fellowships.
Senior fellowships are for six month or one year and are usually offered to postdoctoral, doctoral students or experienced researchers with demonstrated ability and expertise.
Senior fellows are given a monthly stipend of USD 4,200 per month, as well as a travel stipend of USD 2,500 or USD 5,000 depending on the length.
The seasonal fellowship is for three months usually offered to students and/or junior practitioners. Seasonal fellows are awarded monthly stipends of USD 2,500.
Who we are looking for: Applications are open to people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines and can include students, and junior to mid-career practitioners. While individuals with diverse and unlikely backgrounds are encouraged to apply, likely candidates have experience as computer scientists, engineers, information security researchers, software developers, social scientists (e.g., comparative politics; international security), lawyers and law students, data visualization designers, and others.
For descriptions of what the first round of fellows at Citizen Lab and other host organizations accomplished please see this OTF blog post.
Applications must be made by 11:59 PM (GMT-5) on March 25, 2016 using the OTF website.
Google Policy Fellowship
Description: The Google Policy Fellowship program offers undergraduate, graduate, and law students interested in Internet and technology policy the opportunity to spend the summer contributing to the public dialogue on these issues, and exploring future academic and professional interests.
Compensation and Duration: Fellows will work at the Citizen Lab for three months over the summer of 2016. Exact dates are determined together with the fellow and the host organization. Fellows will receive a stipend of $7,500 USD.
Who we are looking for: In order to participate in the program, you must be a student. Google defines a student as an individual enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs and undergraduate programs. Eligibility is based on enrolment in an accredited university by January 1, 2016.
Each year we tailor the Google Policy Fellowship to the individual fellow to match his/her interests and strengths with current projects at the Citizen Lab. In general, we are open to students from a range of backgrounds including law, policy, social sciences (e.g, political science, sociology, international relations, area studies etc), and computer science.
Applications must be made on the Google Policy Fellowship website by 12:00 midnight ET, Friday, March 25th.
Fellowship Project Areas
In all of the 2016 Citizen Lab fellowship opportunities we are looking for individuals who are interested in contributing to our main research priorities listed below.
Measuring Internet filtering and network interference
This area includes developing new tools and methods for network measurement, analyzing Internet filtering systems, and correlating network interference with political events (e.g., elections, protests, conflicts, etc), as well as undertaking comparative studies of national-level information controls.
Targeted malware attacks against civil society
This area focuses on investigating politically motivated targeted malware campaigns against civil society groups. Specifically, this area includes methods such as reverse engineering malware, mapping attack infrastructure, tracking malware development, and linking contextual information to technical data.
Privacy and security of apps and social media
Projects in this area include uncovering censorship and surveillance in popular apps and social media platforms (e.g, chat apps, microblogs, etc), and evaluating the privacy and security of popular consumer apps (e.g., browsers, fitness trackers, etc). We are particularly interested in widely used apps and platforms that are understudied by security researchers. The goal of this work is to help users make more informed decision about the technologies they use.
Corporate and public transparency
Projects in this area include developing software platforms for empowering citizens to exercise their rights to data protection and access requests, and analyzing the systems, policies, and practices of telecommunication and Internet companies around collecting, handling and sharing user data (e.g., lawful intercept and SIGINT). We are also interested in exploring the impact of the Snowden disclosures on SIGINT practices, and the norms governing intelligence sharing among the FVEYs.
Questions?
Please note the individual fellowship websites each have further administrative details. All administration of the application processes is handled by the respective sponsor of the fellowship program. If you have further questions that are not answered by the fellowship websites please contact us at info[at]citizenlab.org with the subject line “Fellowship [OTF / Google / Mozilla]”.
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