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EPSRC fellowships

Fellowship applications

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council now offers two categories of Fellowship – a postdoctoral Fellowship in a limited range of scientific areas and an “Open Fellowship” applicable across the whole portfolio of physical, engineering and energy sciences.

Interested applicants should consult the EPSRC fellowships pages for more information on expected career stage for each fellowship type. Applications from May 2023 are now made through the new UKRI TFS portal (not via JeS). You cannot resubmit the same project proposal should your application be unsuccessful. 

Postdoctoral Fellowships

EPSRC selects which scientific areas they will fund postdoctoral fellowships in at different times so you should refer to EPSRC's list of priority areas to check whether applications are currently being accepted for your scientific area. As of May 2023 applications are currently being accepted in 'energy', 'mathematical sciences' and 'synthetic biology'. We encourage all applicants to carry out a remit check to confirm their proposed project is within remit. See also UKRI Stephen Hawking Fellowships which are now administered through the same submission scheme. 

Funding is available for up to 3 years, which includes your salary, travel and subsistence and research expenses including consumables, but only equipment costing under £10k.

Further information for the re-opening of the May 2023 round is now available on the funder's website - Pre-announcement: EPSRC responsive mode postdoctoral fellowship – UKRI. 

Open Fellowships

Funding is available for up to 5 years, which includes your salary, salary support for PDRAs, travel and subsistence, and research expenses including equipment as per EPSRCs funding rules.

Open Fellowships now provide opportunities not only for traditional research Fellowships, but also enable applicants to focus on innovation, instrumentation/technique development or software engineering or to include non-technical elements to create positive change in the research community should they wish (included in the Open Plus version of the scheme). Note that EPSRC say Open Fellowships are applicable to all career stages beyond postdoctoral level and includes researchers who are close to their first academic appointment, leading in an area of technical development, or are a highly experienced researcher (established faculty can also apply). It is expected that applicants will have already have been in receipt of significant funding (>£100k) and hence applicants are most likely to have several years of postdoctoral experience. Do discuss your career stage with the Facilitation Team before planning to apply.

Further information for the re-opening of the May 2023 round is now available on the funder's website -

Open - Pre-announcement: EPSRC responsive mode open fellowship – UKRI

Open Plus - Pre-announcement: EPSRC responsive mode open plus fellowship – UKRI

Deadlines and timescales 

EPSRC Fellowships will re-open to submissions at the end of May 2023, further information can be found on the links above. Interested applicants are required to submit an EOI (expression of interest) to the department by 23rd May 2023 to obtain departmental approval to apply to this round. The round will close on 28th September 2023 however we will be encouraging applicants to aim for submission by the end of July to ensure we can fully support applications as August and September are exceptionally busy for our team with other fellowship schemes.

Expressions of interest should be sent to fellowships@physics.ox.ac.uk by the above deadline (23rd May 2023) and should consist of the following -

  • CV
  • Publication list
  • 1 page research summary of the proposed fellowship research proposal
  • CC your Oxford Physics sponsor (an academic based in the department who supports your application, you should discuss this with them prior to submitting your EOI). If your EOI is approved by the department to apply to the scheme, you will also require a second reader to support your application (another academic based in the department). 

Guidance and useful info

Once we know that you intend to apply we will be able to send you our internal guidance documents.

For all Fellowships you will require a letter of support from the Head of Department which will be written in collaboration with the local academic who is supporting your application.
Any equipment required will need departmental support (including funding) so please make the facilitation team aware at an early stage in the application process if you are hoping to include a request for equipment in your application.

The interview stage is an important part of the selection process so if you are invited for interview please notify the facilitation team and your local academic contacts as soon as possible so that mock interviews can be arranged in advance of the real interview.