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The Jane Street Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) supports exceptional doctoral students currently pursuing a PhD in computer science, mathematics, physics, or statistics.
At Jane Street, we take a rigorous, quantitative approach to trading on global markets, combining techniques from machine learning, distributed systems, programmable hardware, statistics, and applied mathematics. Our culture is steeped in games, puzzles, and challenging problems. With the Graduate Research Fellowship, we’re excited to support PhD students who share our values: technical excellence, intellectual curiosity, and humility.
See below for more details and feel free to direct questions to graduate-research-fellowship@janestreet.com.
Award details
- Fellows will have their full tuition and fees covered for the upcoming academic year.
- Fellows will also receive a $45,000[1] USD stipend (or the equivalent in your local currency) to help with living expenses while completing their PhD.
- Fellows will be invited (but not required) to visit our office to give a talk on any topic of their choosing to Jane Street employees and other Fellowship recipients; all expenses will be paid.
All Finalists will receive a $5,000 monetary award. Those selected as Fellows will receive this in addition to their Fellowship stipend.
Eligibility
- PhD students who have at least one year remaining in a program in computer science, math, physics, or statistics [2] or have committed to commence a PhD program at a specified university in the Fall of 2024 are eligible to apply.
- Students must remain in good academic standing as an active, full-time member of their PhD program at a degree-granting accredited research institution in the United States, Canada, or Europe for the duration of the academic year of the award, or the award will be forfeited. Deferrals for medical reasons and other extenuating circumstances may be granted on a case-by-case basis.
- International students are eligible and encouraged to apply!
- Current employees (and their immediate family members) as well as former employees and interns are not eligible to become fellows or finalists, though they may be considered for honorable mentions.
- Generally, PhD fellowships require university-specific payment negotiations; if accepted, we will work with your program to arrange the award of your fellowship.
Application
Complete applications should include:
- A CV or resume.
- A brief statement explaining your research (or proposed research direction). This should be geared toward a general, mathematically or technically inclined audience who may not be specialists in your field. If you already have a statement of this form, feel free to use it for this application. If not, we suggest writing something 1-2 pages in length (though longer is fine if you feel it is necessary).
- Contact information for your letter writer(s). Please note that once we receive an application, we will contact you before reaching out to your letter writer(s).
- Any other sources of funding you’re already receiving.
If you have questions about the application process, or are a faculty member who wishes to nominate a student, please email graduate-research-fellowship@janestreet.com.
[1] Note that stipends are taxable and may be subject to tax withholdings.
[2] If your research relates to programming languages and compilers, you might also be interested in our Tools and Compilers Research Internship. It’s intended for graduate students and can be hosted in our London or New York office all year round.
FAQs
Yes!
Most likely your overall stipend would increase, but not by an additional $45,000. Academic funding rules and processes are quite complex, including that some universities enforce funding caps for students, so the answer will depend somewhat on what we are able to work out with your university. However, we are very happy to do this work, and existing funding will not exclude you, so please do not hesitate to apply.
Yes! We intend the Fellowship to support research in all areas of these fields, not only those parts which are related to trading.
Absolutely. We recognize that borders between disciplines can be fuzzy, and that fields are often arranged differently at different universities. We are using these fields to define an approximate academic umbrella. If your work has significant overlap with one or more of these fields, please feel free to apply.
Yes! International students are welcome to apply.
We'd love to hear from you! Please email us with contact information for the student you have in mind and we will reach out to them. Students may also apply directly.
Yes, you can reapply for the Fellowship if you have been named as either a Finalist or Honorable Mention in the past.