AMTD - Eligibility and selection criteria

Who is eligible to apply?

Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada and foreign citizens are eligible to apply. 

Applicants to the 2021 AMTD Fellowship must fulfil or have fulfilled all degree requirements for a PhD:

• Between July 1, 2017 and July 1, 2021 (inclusively)

For applicants who have completed more than one PhD, the eligibility window applies to the most recent of the degrees.

The window of eligibility can be extended by a cumulative maximum of two years if the applicant had their academic career interrupted for one or more of the following reasons:

• Parental leave
• Illness
• Health-related family responsibilities
• Mandatory military service
• Disruptions due to war, civil conflicts and/or natural disasters in a country of residence

Interruptions used to extend the eligibility window for degree completion must have occurred after the “fulfilment of the degree requirements”* and before the application submission deadline.

*“Fulfilled all requirements of the degree” refers to the date that all degree requirements were met, including thesis defence corrections and submission of thesis. It does not refer to the convocation date.

Eligibility restrictions:

• Applicants who currently hold a tri-agency postdoctoral fellowship (Banting, CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC) are eligible to apply for the AMTD Fellowship only if the term of that funding officially ends prior to the start of the AMTD Fellowship.
• Applicants must not hold a tenure-track or tenured faculty position, nor can they be on leave from such a position.
• The AMTD Fellowship is non-renewable and is issued for the duration initially awarded. It can only be held once in a lifetime. In exceptional cases, the terms of duration of the fellowship may be amended.
• The competition is intended for scholars outside of the University of Waterloo; current Waterloo postdocs, research associates or those about to begin a postdoc appointment at Waterloo are not eligible. Only in exceptional circumstances (e.g., scientific, family, health) may a current Waterloo PhD candidate or a recent PhD graduate apply for AMTD endorsement; in order for a current University of Waterloo PhD candidate or recent graduate to be considered, the applicant and supervisor must demonstrate how the postdoctoral appointment will generate transformative outcomes that are beyond the trajectory of the PhD research.

What are the selection criteria?

The program seeks to attract globally recognized, emergent scholars whose work has the possibility to disrupt their disciplines, and the global community.  The University seeks candidates who have demonstrated:

• Academic excellence

• Research productivity

• Evidence of leadership; both academic and beyond the academy

Our expectation that the scholars will be a subset of the following attributes:

• Applicant has held prominent funding, including tri-agency funding in Canada or other national level awards as a graduate student;
• Applicant has held a number of meritorious institutional awards;
• Applicant has an exceptional publication record in the candidate's discipline, typically with evidence of an emerging, independently-defined research program;
• Applicant actively engaged in community and scholarly activities, with an emphasis on research and knowledge dissemination;
• Applicant is one whose academic and scholarly activities place them in the top 1-3% of their peers;
• Applicant and proposed University of Waterloo faculty member have a strong statement of proposed research