SILICON Practitioners Program Application 2024
SILICON Digitally Disadvantaged Languages Fellowship Program
Call for Proposals
Linguists predict that 50% or more of the world’s languages may become extinct this century. Meanwhile, out of the approximately 7,000 living human languages, all but 100–or roughly 98%–are categorized as “Digitally Disadvantaged Languages” (DDLs) by the Unicode Consortium, the non-profit agency committed to ensuring that all human writing systems can be represented digitally across technical platforms.
SILICON, the Stanford Initiative on Language Inclusion and Conservation in Old and New Media, aims to support Digitally Disadvantaged Languages across all stages of the digital inclusion journey: encoding, font and keyboard design, OCR, Machine Translation, AI development, and more. SILICON intends to collaborate closely with relevant user community representatives.
In order to advance digital equity for all living and historic scripts, SILICON invites an inaugural cohort of fellows to apply for small grants to launch, “unstick,” or complete their projects.
SILICON invites applications from keyboard designers, app designers, type designers, Large Language Model designers, language ethnographers, OCR/ML experts, and digital typographic experts for our inaugural SILICON Fellowship Program. Awards of up to $7,000 will be granted for advancing one or more Digitally Disadvantaged Language, living or historic, with projects to be completed virtually between July and December 2024. Fellows will *not* be in residence at Stanford.
Practitioners will be expected to
Move a relevant project forward in substantive, measurable ways, involving clear milestones
Provide periodic updates to be scheduled on a case by case basis
Present their work at the SILICON Face/Interface Conference in 2025 (date TBA)
Document project process, best practices, milestones, and challenges faced
Participate in at least one additional SILICON DDL advocacy project (podcast episode, self-recorded video, event, etc.)
Application Deadline: June 21st, 2024
Application materials*
Cover letter including a brief project description that outlines its projected impact, biographical information
CV/resume
Proposed budget
Completed application form: https://forms.gle/KqkBZ7Kv6bJovHwm9
*Please send files as attachments to silicon_project@stanford.edu with the subject header SURNAME_FIRSTNAME_SILICON (example: JORDAN_MICHAEL_SILICON)
CJ Type
Typographica
Suman