PhD scholarships I can supervise
Scholarship-funded PhD, 3–4 years Start: Usually October
Eligibility: Open to home and international applicants, subject to each scheme’s own rules. A strong background in applied mathematics, physics or engineering.
The scholarships below fund PhD study at Cambridge. Most of them you apply for yourself, alongside your application for admission. They are not awarded on a supervisor’s nomination, and nobody can put you forward for them. What a supervisor does is agree to take you, and an application backed by a supervisor who has already discussed the research with you is a materially stronger one. I am available to be that supervisor.
How to be considered
For a PhD in Engineering starting in October 2027, the University’s funding deadline is 8 December 2026. By that date, submit the full application, with your references, and tick the box applying for funding. Once the application is complete, the Cambridge Trust, the Harding programme and most college awards consider you without a separate form, provided the Department ranks you highly. Gates Cambridge, in contrast, asks for its own reference and essays, submitted in the same portal. The results of these funding competitions arrive mostly in February and March 2027. For admission without funding, the final deadline is 13 May 2027. The current details are on the Department of Engineering postgraduate pages and the University’s funding pages.
International routes
- Cambridge Trust International Scholarship covers the international fee and maintenance for applicants of any nationality other than British or Irish, and is awarded on academic merit alone.
- Cambridge Trust Global South Trailblazer Scholarship is new this year. The scholarship funds doctoral applicants from the Global South whose research supports sustainable development, and among its themes are energy and infrastructure.
- Gates Cambridge pays the full cost of study for citizens of any country other than the UK.
- Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholars Programme is open to all nationalities, and candidates for it are put forward by the Department. A Harding scholarship cannot be held at Trinity or St John’s.
- Commonwealth (Cambridge) Scholarship is for citizens of developing Commonwealth countries. In addition to the Cambridge application, it requires an application to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission.
- EPSRC Doctoral Landscape Awards are mostly for home students. However, a limited share of these awards goes to international applicants, and for them the difference in fees is met by the University.
- Trinity College offers the G-Research PhD Studentship and its External Research Studentships. One G-Research studentship is reserved for an overseas student in Engineering, Computer Science or Pure Mathematics, with a preference for machine learning. To be considered for either, name Trinity as your first-choice college.
The Cambridge Trust also runs awards for particular countries, such as Jardine for South-East and East Asia, Jameel for applicants including those from Bangladesh and Pakistan, and Brown for Canada. These country awards are listed by nationality in the Trust’s scholarship search.
For students from India
The Cambridge Trust International, Global South Trailblazer, Gates, Harding and EPSRC routes above are all open to Indian citizens. Several schemes that are often suggested are not open to them. In particular, Commonwealth PhD Scholarships do not include India, and the Inlaks scholarship excludes Engineering. The J.N. Tata Endowment, the K.C. Mahindra Education Trust and the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation help with the cost only through loans. The Government of India’s National Overseas Scholarship is open only to applicants from its eligible categories, and the awards of the Oxford and Cambridge Society of India are small. In this year’s Cambridge Trust listing, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Cambridge Scholarship does not appear, so check with the Trust before relying on it. Since the Indian schemes have usually closed between January and June, after the Cambridge funding deadline, apply to Cambridge first.
Where our interests would need to overlap
I supervise work in continuum mechanics: fluid–structure interaction, interfacial flows and soap films, kinematic optimization, the mechanics of feet and fins, and flows relevant to renewable energy. An application I can support is one where your interests genuinely meet those, not one where the overlap has been manufactured for the form.
Approaching me
Write before you apply. Send a CV, a paragraph on your background, and a few sentences on which of the problems above interests you and why. Say which scheme you are aiming at and what its deadline is, so I know what timetable we are working to. A message that could have gone to fifty academics unchanged tells me nothing.
If you are still deciding whether to do a PhD at all, read Stephen Stearns’ modest advice first.