Restricted call: EPSRC Doctoral focal award: chip design and verification (internal deadline: 15 October 2026)

UKRI has recently announced a Doctoral focal award: chip design and verification call to support interdisciplinary training in very large-scale integration design and systems-on-chip.

The successful doctoral focal award will address the UK Government AI Hardware Plan by:

• training a pipeline of doctoral-level very large-scale integration chip design and advanced compute specialists, building capability in AI accelerators, hardware-software co-design and energy-efficient systems, strengthening industry-academia collaboration, and establishing a national centre of excellence in semiconductor design
• delivering interdisciplinary, cohort-based doctoral training in integrated circuit design, systems-on-chip, verification, and system-level capability
• training cohorts of doctoral researchers with deep, industry-relevant design expertise, leading to physical demonstrators such as tape-out and so on
• anchoring UK capability in areas critical to AI hardware and advanced compute

UKRI will make a single award which will support 2 cohorts x 10 four-year FTE (or equivalent) studentships initially. UKRI will work with the successful team on further cohorts with additional funding; this could add up to a further 3 cohorts of studentships. The award is to start no earlier than April 2027 with Cohort 1 students starting in September 2027.

There is an expectation that industry partners will be integrated into programme delivery (direct placements, technical enablement, co-delivery of training) and that they would collectively provide at least 20% cash contribution towards total studentship costs – specifically to increase the number of students in each cohort.

University internal selection

Institutions can only lead on one application and this applies from the mandatory EoI stage. Therefore, this call will be managed according to the University’s restricted calls procedure. Coordination across Departments and Schools is encouraged and is being facilitated by Sally Birse in the School of Technology (seab2@cam.ac.uk) and Xavier Montiel in the School of Physical Sciences (Xavier.Montiel@admin.cam.ac.uk).

If you are to be the Project Lead on a proposed bid, your Department’s Research Grants Team and/or Departmental Administrator (or equivalent) must be made aware of your internal application.

To take part in the internal selection, please complete our online form EPSRC Doctoral focal award: chip design and verification – Fill in form by 15 October 2026 (NB: if asked to log-in, please use your ‘@cam’ University account details and note that a Form cannot be saved and returned to).

You will need the following documents and information to complete the Form:

• Basic details of the proposed Project Lead (name, Department, email)
• CV of the Project Lead
• Initial list of co-leads (internal and external)
• Proposal summary, including your vision for the DFA in the context of positive outcomes and impact for society and the economy, and outlining your proposed model for delivering doctoral training (800 words max.)
• Brief support letter from the Head of Department, countersigned by the Head of School

Internal Assessment Criteria

Internal applications will be assessed on:

• Capability of the Project lead and co-leads to design and deliver a DFA in chip design and verification

• Alignment of vision and proposed approach with the key aims of the call, listed above

Funder’s timeline

• Opening date: 7 October 2026 9:00am
• Mandatory EoI deadline: 5 November 2026 4:00pm – to be submitted by email to ict.theme@epsrc.ukri.org; institutional approval must first be confirmed
• Closing date: 2 December 2026 4:00pm

Posted on 01/10/2026