Doctoral focal award: chip design and verification

Open UKRI funding opportunity · Grant. Closes 2026-12-02. Total fund £6 million. Opportunity page: https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/doctoral-focal-award-chip-design-and-verification/

Apply for funding to establish a doctoral focal award in chip design and verification. This supports interdisciplinary training in very large-scale integration design and systems-on-chip.

You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for EPSRC funding.

Funding will initially be available to support for two cohorts of students. Funding for further cohorts may be available in future.

As a non-full economic cost award, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will fund 100% of eligible costs listed in the opportunity. Estates and indirect costs will not be funded.

What we're looking for Aim

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

Given the importance of this area to the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, sector plans and AI Hardware Plan, UKRI is making this investment to ensure graduates have the desired skills needed to support economic growth and productivity in key areas of strength in the UK semiconductor sector.

Scope

This funding opportunity will fund doctoral focal awards to train the next generation of UK…