NVIDIA has kicked off its 10th Annual Graduate Fellowship Program to fund work that helps solve complex visual computing challenges. Up to ten selected Ph.D. students will receive individual grants of US $25,000 for research that advances parallel computing and graphics processing.

The program is open to applicants worldwide starting today. All applications must be received by Feb. 3, 2011. Winners will be announced in April, 2011. Eligibility criteria include completion of the first year of doctorate-level studies in computer architecture, computer science, electrical engineering, high-performance computing, scientific computing or a related area. Applicants must be a member of an active research team. "The world faces huge challenges today in computing, science and medicine," said Bill Dally, chief scientist at NVIDIA. "The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program provides funding for research that will lead to major advances in graphics and high-performance computing, which can accelerate critical research in fields ranging from cancer research to energy exploration."

In addition to receiving funding for their research, award recipients will also have access to NVIDIA technology and programming talent.

Nicolas Pinto, a grant recipient over each of the past two years, said, "The NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Award helped accelerate our research efforts at MIT and Harvard on developing computational theories of how the visual cortex recognizes objects. Our work led to the development of some of today's most promising large-scale object and face recognition systems. I strongly encourage any graduate student in computer science or neuroscience to apply for one of these grants."

Since its inception in 2002, the NVIDIA Fellowship program has awarded more than $2 million to over 84 Ph.D. research students.