Overview of the SYLFF Program

SYLFF (pronounced “sylph”) is the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund that was established in 1987. Over the past decade, 61 universities and consortia in 40 countries have received endowments of US$1 million from the Nippon Foundation. These SYLFF institutions use the interest generated from their respective endowments to provide fellowships to promising graduate students in social sciences and humanities fields to study at their home universities or abroad. The term “SYLFF program” is frequently used to encompass the entirety of this fellowship program, “SYLFF institutions” to denote universities or groups of institutions that have received an endowment, and “SYLFF fellows” in referring to the nearly 7,500 students who have received fellowships. The Scholarship Division administers the SYLFF program and its follow-up programs.