Thanks to a generous donation by the following winners of the Breakthrough Prizes in Mathematics – Ian Agol, Jean Bourgain, Simon Donaldson, Alex Eskin, Christopher Hacon, Martin Hairer, Maxim Kontsevich, Vincent Lafforgue, Jacob Lurie, James McKernan, Takuro Mochizuki, Daniel A. Spielman, Terence Tao, and Richard Taylor – the International Mathematical Union, with the assistance of FIMU, maintains a fellowship program to support postgraduate studies, in a developing country, leading to a PhD degree in the mathematical sciences.

The IMU Breakout Graduate Fellowships offers a limited number of grants for excellent students from developing countries.

Professional mathematicians are invited to nominate highly motivated and mathematically talented students from developing countries who plan to complete a doctoral degree in a developing country, including their own home country. Nominees must have a consistently good academic record and must be seriously interested in pursuing a career of research and teaching in mathematics.

It is the hope of the donors, the IMU and FIMU that the fellowship helps educate the next generation of mathematicians and hopefully results in extended benefits to the home countries of those chosen for the fellowships.

The program was the subject of the editorial of the January issues of the IMU-Net 93 by Terry Tao (UCLA) and Richard Taylor (Stanford University), as well as the interesting article by Della Dumbaugh which appeared in the September issue of the AMS notices in 2019.