Belgium: IRO Doctoral Scholarships for Developing Countries

As one of its contributions to development co-operation, K.U.Leuven offers each academic year scholarships to deserving students from developing countries to do their PhD in the largest university in Flanders, Belgium.

Also commonly referred to as the IRO scholarships (IRO in Dutch stands for Interfacultaire Raad voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking), this scholarship programme has supported more than sixty Ph.D. graduates over the past five years. After obtaining their doctorates at K.U.Leuven, these Ph.D. holders are now valorising their degrees in their home countries either in university academic research or in various sectors of industry.

Essential to the application for the IRO scholarship and to completing a doctoral programme successfully is the choice of a good doctoral research topic and supervisor. New applicants are now provided two alternatives: either by selecting amongst the faculty research topics offered by the doctoral schools or by submitting their own personal research proposal.

K.U.Leuven, which is situated at about 20 kilometers from Brussels, the capital of both Belgium and Europe, is the oldest university of the Low Countries. As such, it has a long-standing tradition of hospitality towards students and scholars from abroad. At present, almost 4,000 international students (about 10% of the total number of students at K.U.Leuven) have found their home away from home in Leuven.

Faculty Research Topics
Faculty research topics for the IRO scholarships are proposed by the three doctoral schools:

Humanities and Social Sciences
Science, Engineering and Technology (Arenberg doctoral school)
Biomedical Sciences

The mission of these doctoral schools is

• to organize the international recruitment and placement of doctoral students.
• to organize a doctoral training programme by which doctoral students develop their personal and academic skills, broaden their horizon and to interact with top-level scientists while discussing and conducting cutting edge research.
• to promote the career perspectives of doctoral students through the training they provide, and also through the networks the schools have with organizations, industries and other universities.

Applicants for the IRO scholarship who do not yet have a particular research topic in mind may select a particular topic that interests them out of the priority research fields. Alternatively, you may also select a topic that is offered in general in the webpages of the doctoral schools. In either case, you will need to include a brief motivation explaining how the topic you chose can be approached and treated in a manner relevant to development co-operation.

The print-out of the research topic and your motivation need to be included in your application file. (New priority research fields for the selection round 2010-2011 will be available by November 2009.)

Research Proposal
Applicants for the IRO scholarships who already have a specific research topic in mind may submit their own, personal research proposal along with their application file, instead of one of the priority research fields.

Your first step is to contact a professor at K.U.Leuven to discuss the opportunities for pursuing doctoral studies with your proposed personal research topic. Within the websites of the three Doctoral Schools, namely "Humanities and Social Sciences", "Science, Engineering and Technology (Arenberg doctoral school)" and "Biomedical Sciences", you can find out which K.U.Leuven professors do research on which topics. Alternatively, you may also visit the webpages of the faculties or departments in order to get an idea of the faculty members' research interests.

The contact information for each professor is provided accordingly.

Your next step is then to fill out the following form, indicating the name of the prospective professor-supervisor, the title, outline, tentative bibliography, provisional objectives, methodology and time-frame of your research. The form simply provides the basic structure of the proposal. The proposal itself may, of course, be longer than the two pages provided. Lastly, the prospective supervisor has to endorse your proposal by appending his or her signature.
Applicants for the IRO scholarship who are already enrolled in a doctoral programme at K.U.Leuven will only need to prepare a detailed progress report of their research, instead of a research proposal. The report must also be signed by the student’s supervisor.

Selection procedures

November 30, 2009: application deadline
December 2009 to January 2010: All complete applications are submitted to the faculties concerned for assessment and ranking.
February 2010: The five top-ranking applications from each faculty are further evaluated and scored by the K.U.Leuven Research Council.
mid-March 2010: The final selection of new scholarship students is undertaken by the Interfaculty Council for Development Co-operation and sent to the K.U.Leuven Board of Management for final approval. This selection is very severe and each year only around 15 new scholarships can be granted.
end-March 2010: The International Office of K.U.Leuven will prepare and send the official admission letters and scholarship attestations to the selected candidates.
April to August 2010: Selected candidates apply for their Belgian student visas and prepare for their travel to Leuven.
Early September 2010: Arrival in Leuven

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