UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING VICE CHANCELLOR’S POSTGRADUATE INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP

LOCATION: Scotland 

The University of Stirling is for seeking students who are prepared to inspire, eager to shape their future careers, and ready to ‘be the difference’ both in Stirling and globally within their communities.

As part of their commitment to attracting the very best students to join their diverse international community, they are delighted to offer the Vice Chancellor’s Postgraduate International Scholarship.

ELIGIBILITY:

You must have received a conditional or unconditional offer for an eligible postgraduate taught course at the University of Stirling; any application without a valid offer will not be assessed.

You must pay the scholarship deposit of £1,000 to secure the scholarship by the deadline outlined on your scholarship offer letter (see ‘how to apply’ for deadlines).

Please ensure that you have read the terms and conditions before submitting your application.

You must be a new student starting at the university in January 2027.

You must be classified as an international student for tuition fee purposes.

You must be a self-funded student (those receiving external sponsorship or other scholarships will not be eligible).

You must enter directly into a full-time postgraduate degree programme delivered at the university’s Stirling campus.

Online degrees are not eligible.

This scholarship cannot be combined with any other Stirling scholarship or award. If offered more than one University of Stirling award, then the highest-value award will be applied.

Students progressing from an INTO Pre-Masters course are not eligible to apply but may be eligible for INTO Progression scholarships

BENEFIT:

This scholarship is awarded in the form of a £7,000 tuition fee waiver for new students in the first year of a master’s degree and is open to all full-time, self-funding students who are classed as international for tuition fee purposes.

APPLY

THE SAHARA CODESWITCH AFRICA CHALLENGE

Application Deadline: 15 September 2026

LOCATION: Africa

The Sahara CodeSwitch Africa Challenge invites developers, startups, researchers, product teams, and builders across Africa to help solve one of the biggest unsolved problems in voice AI. Use Sahara’s new code-switching APIs. Build real applications. Benchmark what works. Help surface how well current speech models handle code-switched audio in real-world settings.

ELIGIBILITY:

The Challenge Task:

Create or improve a real-world voice AI application

The transcript received can be used to perform a downstream task. Examples include a voice assistant that completes a booking, a voice-driven triage tool, a spoken-language form-filler, or a voice interface that takes an action on a user’s behalf.

Each submission must:

Use voice to achieve a downstream task (the agentic component), not simply convert speech to text.

Benchmark performance on code-switched audio input across at least three speech models, including an Intron Sahara API and at least two other models of the team’s choice (global, local, open-source, commercial, pretrained, or fine-tuned).

Target a specific vertical or use case (see categories below).

Where possible and permitted, submit code-switched audio samples used for testing with basic metadata (language pair, domain, accent/country, device type, and noise conditions).

Categories: Five tracks designed for real-world impact across Africa – Health, Legal & Public Services, Fintech, Telco & Customer Experience, Agriculture & Education, and Other High-Impact Use Cases

Applications are open to builders across Africa and the diaspora. Apply as a solo builder or as a team. We especially encourage:

Developers & engineers

AI/ML researchers

Startups & product teams

Student teams

Open-source builders

NGOs & civic-tech teams

Companies with voice or customer-facing workflows

Bonus points will be given to solutions addressing a real problem for a meaningful population size.
Submissions can include fresh ideas, production apps, apps close to deployment, etc., clearly designed for real-world use.

Who should enter

Applications are open to builders across Africa and the diaspora. Apply as a solo builder or as a team. We especially encourage:

Team Formation:

You can apply as an individual or as a team.

Teams may include developers, researchers, designers, domain experts, product managers, linguists, clinicians, customer-support operators, field workers, or anyone who understands the problem you are solving.

Recommended team size: 2–5 people.

What to Submit:

Keep it concise. Focus on impact, execution, and responsible use.

Problem & Solution: A short description of the problem and your proposed solution.

Working Prototype: A short video demo of a working prototype or integrated application.

Code & Docs: Code or technical documentation for your implementation.

Benchmark Results: Comparing Sahara against at least three other speech models.

Responsible AI: A note on privacy, consent, safety, and responsible data use.

BENEFIT:

$10,000Total Cash Prize Pool

Cash prizes will be awarded to top-performing solutions across the challenge categories.

Workshop Challenge Prize

$1,200: Winner

$800: Runner-up

APPLY

explore. discover. inspire