Call for Applications for BMI Ph.D. Stipend Support

The Boris Mints Institute at Tel-Aviv University was founded with the intention to encourage research, planning and innovative thinking to promote significant positive change in the world. BMI is focusing on finding strategic feasible solutions and funds innovative projects to enhance the welfare of communities around the globe. The Institute brings together top-tier academics, world leaders, and talented and passionate researchers from Tel Aviv University and other leading universities: http://www.bmiglobalsolutions.org/

The Boris Mints Institute’s (BMI) Five-Year Strategic Plan (2025–2030) focuses on four critical global challenges: inequality, the fragility of liberal democracies, climate-related infrastructure failure, and international conflict. Building on a decade of experience and success in sustainable development, BMI now shifts its primary efforts to address these underperforming areas through four dedicated research labs: (1) Institutions for Equitable Resource Distribution, (2) Institutions Supporting Liberal Values, (3) Sustainable Infrastructure Management (via the Archimedes Center), and (4) Conflict Resolution and Peace. The plan emphasizes practical, research-based policy solutions that go beyond market-based mechanisms, advocating for tools like Universal Basic Income and city-level governance reforms to restore democratic resilience and social equity.

Key research goals include modeling conflict escalations, understanding the spread of polarizing narratives, exploring time-use as a metric for well-being, and improving intergenerational mobility and infrastructure resilience. By coordinating interdisciplinary research across these labs and promoting global collaboration, the institute aims to address 13 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), pushing back against global policy stagnation with actionable and innovative institutional solutions.

As part of our long tradition, we are launching our annual call for application for BMI, Ph.D. stipend support.  50% scholarships will be awarded to 15 leading Ph.D. students at Tel Aviv University, in the general areas of sustainable development, conflict resolution, democratic values and economics: preference will be given to innovative macro-economic project with direct impact on broad measures of welfare and well being.

Important Dates:

The last date of submission for the academic year of 2025-2026 is Sunday, August 31^st 2025 at midnight Israel Time.

Application:

Applicants will submit their application in the online application form at the formal website of BMI: https://bmiglobalsolutions.org/

The application must be supplemented by a letter of recommendation, submitted by the student’s Ph.D. advisor.  In their letter, the advisor will commit to supplement the stipend given by BMI with at least 50% stipend so that any student supported by BMI will be supported by at least 100% stipend.  The letter of recommendation will be sent to the formal e-mail of the institute at bminstitute@tauex.tau.ac.il . A second letter of recommendation will be sent to the same address by August 31 2025 by a scholar who is not the Ph.D. supervisor of the student, but can provide useful information on the student’s academic prospects.

Evaluation Criteria:

The applications will be evaluated by a committee of five scholars chaired by the Head of the Boris Mints Institute, Professor Itai Sened.  The awards will be subject to a final review of the steering committee of the institute. Evaluation criteria will include:

• Originality and innovation
• Potential contribution of the results of proposed study to strategic policy solutions to global challenges
• Relevance of the proposal to the four theme subjects mentioned above
• Combination of theory and empirical data
• Additional funding from other sources
• Approval the student to level 2 of the Ph.D. by the relevant academic unit.

Publications of results:

BMI will give preference to students whose work is most likely to be published in top academic Journals.

Please contact us for further questions and details only via e-mail at bminstitute@tauex.tau.ac.il