UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training: Safe & Trusted AI PhD

The CDT will fund up to 15 studentships each year, depending on the support available. Each studentship will be funded for 4 years. Funding includes tuition fees, stipend and a Research Training Support Grant (RTSG).

• Tuition fees: Funded students will have full fees covered at the appropriate rate, whether home or international.
• Stipend: a tax-free stipend set at the UKRI rate plus London-weighting (for 2022-23, students studying full-time in London receive a stipend of £19,668).
• RTSG: A generous allowance will be provided for research consumables and additional training, and for attending UK and international conferences.

Who can apply?

Any prospective doctoral student wishing to study at the Centre, including prospective international students, can apply for a UKRI studentship. All UKRI-funded doctoral students will be eligible for the full award – both the stipend to support living costs, and fees at the UK research organisation rate. However, UKRI international studentships are limited to 30 percent of the total cohort and places will be competitive.

A change in UKRI criteria came into force at the start of the 2021 academic year, following the UK’s exit from the EU. For information see Changes to EU and International Eligibility for UKRI funded studentships from Academic Year 2021-22 onwards.

For further guidance on fee status, visit the:

• Advice & Guidance webpages if making an application to King’s, and
• Visas and Immigration webpages if making an application to Imperial.

Home Students

Home students will be eligible for a full UKRI award, including fees and stipend. To be classed as a Home student, candidates must meet the following criteria:

• be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or
• have settled status, or
• have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
• have indefinite leave to remain or enter.

If a candidate does not meet the criteria above, they will be classed as an International student.

International students

International students applying to the Centre are eligible for full UKRI-funded studentships covering fees at the overseas rate and stipend. Studentships for international students are limited in number and competitive, and we encourage strong international candidates to apply.

Part-time students

It is possible to apply to the Centre to study on a part-time basis and we welcome applications from people who are unable to study full-time due to managing, for example, caring responsibilities, a disability or chronic illness. Because of the nature of the Centre and its training programme, the demands on part-time students are somewhat different to those made of part-time students on a standard PhD programme. All part-time students enrolled in the Centre are required to:

• Commit a minimum of 50% full-time-equivalent time to their PhD and the CDT programme.
• Maintain a regular physical presence in the department during normal working hours.
• Attend all compulsory elements of the Centre, including all training activities and all cohort building activities. This may sometimes necessitate full-time attendance over a period (for example, full-time attendance at the Centre Summer School will be expected over a 3 – 4 day period), and such activities may fall outside a student’s typical part-time hours. (Note that the Centre has a Carers’ Fund, which students may apply to in order to cover caring costs incurred by attendance of Centre activities that fall outside of normal hours.)

Part-time students will be supported by a pro-rata studentship in line with their mode of registration (assuming eligibility for a studentship as per UKRI Terms and Conditions).

If you are interested in the possibility of part-time study within the Centre please send an email to  stai-cdt-admissions@kcl.ac.uk  in advance of the application deadline in order to discuss this. The Centre is unable to consider part-time applications from applicants who do not do this.

Note that the demands of cohort-based training, and the requirement for a minimum of 50% full time equivalent, mean that this programme is unfortunately not suitable for those wishing to combine a part-time PhD with a full-time career role. In this context, we believe it would be very difficult to effectively participate in this programme on a part-time basis if you are working more than 3 days per week and, moreover, we believe that to be successful, you will ideally be working much less than this. If you intend to combine a PhD with paid work that prevents full engagement with the cohort-based training programme offered by our Centre, you may instead wish to consider opportunities on a standard part-time PhD programme. Please see information on the Computer Science Research MPhil/PhD at the Dept of Informatics at King’s or PhDs in the Dept of Computing at Imperial.

Students in full-time employment

Because part-time students are required to study with a minimum of 50% full-time equivalent, the Centre is unfortunately unable to consider part-time applications from applicants in full-time work. Students in full-time employment are also not eligible for a studentship of any kind.

Self-funded students

We also welcome applications from students (Home/EU/International) who have secured their own funding or are in receipt of alternative scholarships.

If you are a self-funded student and wish to study within the Centre please send an email to stai-cdt-admissions@kcl.ac.uk in advance of the application deadline in order to discuss this.