

Mohammad Ful Hossain Seikh, a SSGSA scholar (2018-19) and the first Alig to reach Greenland’s Summit Station, carried the spirit of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) to the top of the world. From Murshidabad to Aligarh and then to the Arctic, his journey reflects how education can ignite courage, resilience, and humility. Amid freezing winds and endless snow, he unfurled the flags of India, AMU, and the University of Kansas: a gesture symbolizing gratitude to his mentors and alma mater. His story stands as a powerful reminder that no matter how far we go, the journey of inspiration and purpose always begins at Aligarh.

The Simmone Siddiqui Memorial Award (SSMA), established in memory of Late Ms. Simmone Siddiqui, supports Sir Syed Global Scholar Award (SSGSA) recipients with up to $1000 to cover their first-time travel expenses for beginning graduate studies abroad. The first awardee (2025) is Fazila Sartaj, who started her PhD at Binghamton University, SUNY, USA in Fall 2025.

The Sir Syed Education Society of North America proudly announces the selection of 27 exemplary students and alumni from AMU for the highly coveted Sir Syed Global Scholar Award (SSGSA) for the academic session 2025-26. The SSGSA program received an overwhelming number of exceptional applications this year from a diverse range of faculties including Arts, Commerce, Humanities, Law, Science, Medicine, Life Sciences, and Engineering & Technology. Each application underwent a rigorous evaluation process, carefully reviewed by three independent experts in the respective fields of the applicants followed by the final round of online interviews.

In the scholar's orientation (session 2022-23), 27 new members of the SSGSA family were given a brief introduction to the SSGSA. They were provided with the general guidelines on the application and mentorship process. Amongst 13 successful SSGSA scholars from the previous year, a few shared their success stories. It also featured a talk from Dr. Zafeer Ahmad, who represented the AMU Alumni Association of Greater Chicago, one of our major donors.

The SSGSA convention 2020 was a great success and featured talks from the Nobel laureate Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, award winning actress Ms. Swara Bhasker, Hon’ble Vice Chancellor of AMU, Prof. Tariq Mansoor & Noted Philanthropist Dr. Frank Islam.

The training and skill development division at SSGSA has successfully organized its first technical workshop, virtually on 29-30.01.2022. The workshop participants had "hands-on" training using commonly used software related to molecular biology during the practical session of two hours each day.
An Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) alumni initiative for mentoring and financially supporting meritorious AMU students for grad school applications.
Read more about SSGSA here.
| Opening date of Applications | Feb 15, 2025 |
| Closing date of Applications | Mar 08, 2025 |
| Announcement of Shortlisted candidates | Apr 28, 2025 |
| Interviews | May 03 & May 04, 2025 |
| Announcement of Results | Jun 02, 2025 |
| Orientation | Jun 14, 2025 |
| Allotment of Mentors | Jun 19, 2025 |

Safia Rahmat
Safia is working with Oracle Inc. She graduated from the University of Toledo in 2018. She works on determining the malicious network pattern seen for both system and android traffic.

Sajad Shiekh
Sajad joined as a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics at Kent State University in 2018. He is studying biological systems using high resolution fluorescence microscopy methods at the single molecule level. His research projects are at the interface of physics, biology, and chemistry and are collaborating with researchers from these disciplines.

Rajat Goel
Rajat completed his MS in Computer Science from University of Southern California in the year 2018. He is currently working as a software engineer at Google and is responsible for optimizing Ads bidding using data science and machine learning. Before that, he worked as a software engineer at Autodesk for more than 3 years, building backend infrastructure for its consumer manufacturing software Fusion 360. His expertise is in backend software development and machine learning systems including deep learning and natural language processing.

Mohd Tajuddin Khan
Taj is a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics of Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University (OSU). He holds a Master's degree in Applied Economics from the Madras School of Economics (MSE) and a bachelor's degree in Economics (Honours) with a minor in Mathematics and Statistics from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). Before starting his PhD, he worked for nearly six years in New Delhi, at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NIAP). His research was primarily concerned with applied microeconomics for agricultural development, and his area of research interests includes Applied Microeconomics, Agricultural Economics, Development Economics, and Food Policy.

Rukhsar Ahmed
Rukhsar completed her B.Tech and M.Tech in Chemical engineering from Aligarh Muslim University. She joined the PhD program at Oklahoma State University in 2020 in the area of mass transfer and separations, focusing on distillation. She is studying the effect of the stripping factor on the efficiency of the distillation column. Her study aims to provide new experimental data on non-total reflux mode of operation which is common in real-world applications of distillation.

Amna Jalali
Amna completed her B.Com. (Honours) and a PG Diploma in Business Finance from Aligarh Muslim University. She started her Master's degree in Finance at the University of New Haven in Fall 2021. Earlier, she worked as a language partner at the American Institute of Indian Studies, launched a food start-up in 2020 and worked as an Accounting Manager for a real estate company. She is a finance enthusiast and an advocate of advancing women's representation in the financial services, especially in leadership roles.

Vanshika Varshney
Vanshika recently graduated with a Masters in Management Information Systems from Texas A&M University in 2021. She is currently working with Dell Technologies as a Product Manager within their Edge Solutions and Ecosystems team and is responsible for conducting in-depth business case analysis for improvements to optimize existing Edge offers. Vanshika graduated from Aligarh Muslim University with a Bachelors's in Computer Engineering in 2018. After this, she joined Noida Power Company Limited, where she worked within business intelligence and conducted data analysis and visualization in SAP BI/BO.

Hafijul Islam
Hafijul joined the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in 2018 as a PhD student. In the beginning of 2019 he started working as a Research Assistant in the Earth, Ocean, and Space (EOS) institute at UNH. He is currently studying the dynamics of the boundary of the Heliosphere by observing Interstellar Neutral Particles like hydrogen, helium and oxygen detected by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). The heliosphere is a huge cavity around the solar system in the Local Interstellar Medium caused by the interaction of the solar wind to the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC). IBEX is a small NASA explorer mission launched in 2008 and is still active. He is also involved in the Interstellar Mapping Acceleration Probe (IMAP) which will be launched in 2025 by NASA, a successor of IBEX. IMAP will help to better understand the heliosphere and other astrospheres, as well as the position and future of the solar system in the galactic environment.

Mohammad Ful Hossain Seikh
Mohammad Ful Hossain Seikh is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas working with the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) collaboration to detect ultra-high energy neutrinos, particles of likely extragalactic origin that may unveil the universe’s most violent and energetic astrophysical events. His work focuses on radio detection techniques in polar ice, surface-wave propagation, and signal reconstruction for next-generation neutrino observatories. He is among the very few Indian scientists to conduct in-ice radio measurements at Summit Station, Greenland, as part of the Radio Neutrino Observatory in Greenland (RNO-G) calibration campaign. He also serves as a guest editor for Springer’s European Physical Journal – Special Topics and contributes to several international collaborations, including ARA, RNO-G, RET, ARIANNA, and IceCube.
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