Deadline: 29 April 2025, 4pm BST
The Government Office for Science offers UK Intelligence Community (IC) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships to outstanding early career science or engineering researchers.
These Fellowships are designed to promote unclassified basic research in areas of interest to the intelligence, security and defence communities. The National Protective Security Authority, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Home Office, the National Cyber Security Centre, and UK National Authority for Counter-Eavesdropping are among the organisations represented in the UK Intelligence Community for this scheme.
The Research Fellowships are aimed at early-career researchers from all branches of science and engineering who have up to five years postdoctoral experience. Only citizens of Australia, Canada, the EEA, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK or the US can apply.
One round of applications is held annually. Each year members of the IC identify research topics and the Research Fellows work locally with their University Research Advisor to develop and submit research proposals that align with the topics.
Each application for the UK IC Postdoctoral Research Fellowships is capped at a maximum contribution of £250,000 over the 2-year period, at 80% of the full economic costs (fEC).
Some research topics (of 27) include:
- The psychology of intuition - the implications associated with creativity and cognitive bias for the security community
- Barriers to adoption of a security-minded approach to information management
- Enhancing the effectiveness of routine security scanning checks at border crossings
Find out more about the fellowship programme below, including the full list of research topics for 2025.