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PhD and Job Applications

At any time we're usually looking for a small number of good researchers for PhD positions and for Research Fellow (sometimes known as Research Assistant) positions. This page is intended to help you know who to contact in the first place, and give you some idea of the sort of person we're looking for.


PhD Students

We take on approximately four or five students each year for networking PhDs. Two factors are key:

  • Research Interests. Each member of academic staff has their own interests, and is only likely to accept students whose interests are reasonably well aligned with theirs.

  • Funding. The availability of funding from UCL-CS depends strongly on whether we have a research project that has already been approved in a particular area. There is sometimes funding available for non-project-based PhDs, but we have almost no support available for foreign students.
We get a lot of email from prospective PhD students, but it's very hard to evaluate whether you might be a good match from email. If you're serious about applying for a PhD position, you need to follow the application procedure.

You can still email us about possible PhD places, but don't expect much response to a general query. Instead, if you're interested in a particular research area, directly contact the relevant person who is interested that specific subject area. They'll be able to advise you about funding possibilities and whether you have the skills they're looking for.

Research Fellows

A research fellow is contract research staff (sometimes called a research assistant in other universities). They're usually appointed on fixed-term contacts typically ranging from a year to three years. We have both graduate and postdoc research fellows, and a number of our graduate research fellows are registered for part-time PhDs.

Research fellows are always appointed to specific research projects, so there is no point in applying unless a project has funding available.