Cambridge ERA:AI Fellowship 2027 in UK

Applications are now open for the Cambridge ERA:AI Fellowship, a prestigious 10-week research programme dedicated to advancing AI safety and governance. This fully funded fellowship is open to talented individuals from any background, educational level, or career stage who are committed to addressing risks from frontier AI systems.

Whether you’re a researcher, policy professional, technician, or domain expert, you can apply at no cost. The winter cohort begins on 18th January 2027, with applications closing on 13th September 2026. This is a unique opportunity to conduct impactful research, work with leading mentors, and join a community of fellows pushing the boundaries of AI safety and governance.You can check out BS, MS, PhD and postdoc positions here.

What We Provide:

• Full Funding: Fellows receive a stipend of £10,000, plus visa support, meal provisions during working hours, and travel expense coverage
• Expert Mentorship: Work closely with a mentor on your research agenda for the fellowship. ERA mentors are matched with fellows once they are accepted
• Research Support: Dedicated research management support to help fellows become strong researchers and policymakers. Many alumni have published in top journals and conferences such as NeurIPS
• Community: Immerse yourself in a learning environment with a dedicated desk space at our Cambridge office and regular social events and community activities
• Networking and Learning Opportunities: Develop skills, expertise, and networks to thrive in an AI safety or policy career. We facilitate introductions to many organisations in the field and provide extra financial assistance in special cases to support impactful career transitions

Who Can Apply?

Anyone! We are a talent-first programme with no formal eligibility restrictions beyond being 18 or older. We welcome fellows from a wide range of subject areas who are committed to our mission.

The Fellowship Is Especially Valuable For:

• Researchers at any career stage looking to apply their expertise to high-priority questions in AI safety or governance, explore new research directions, or work across disciplinary boundaries
• Professionals from technical, policy, security, legal, economic or other relevant fields who want to bring their expertise to frontier AI safety and governance
• People seeking to deepen or redirect an existing research agenda towards problems arising from increasingly capable AI systems
• People with distinctive domain expertise or perspectives that could improve how we understand and address risks from advanced AI

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Our Research Areas:

• ERA fellows develop and complete a research project on technical and/or governance measures to mitigate the risks posed by frontier AI systems.
• They have support from ERA’s research managers, mentors, and institutional network. We mentor researchers from University of Cambridge, UK AI Security Institute, Centre for the Governance of AI, RAND Corporation, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Anthropic, and more.

Technical AI Safety

As AI systems become more capable and autonomous, understanding their behaviour, identifying dangerous capabilities, and maintaining meaningful human oversight are increasingly important.

We support research across evaluations, interpretability, robustness, alignment and control. Fellows work on questions including:

• Measuring and eliciting dangerous capabilities
• Understanding model internals
• Designing robust safeguards
• Monitoring model behaviour
• Developing techniques for controlling systems whose objectives may not align with their operators
• Detecting deceptive or strategically evasive behaviour
• Controlling systems capable of automating parts of AI R&D
• Accelerating alignment research across the full stack of LLM training
• Developing safeguards that remain effective under increasingly capable models

AI Governance

As frontier AI systems become more capable, decisions about their development, deployment, and governance become increasingly consequential. Effective governance requires institutions that understand rapidly changing risks, establish credible rules and safeguards, and coordinate internationally.

We support research advancing:

• International cooperation on AI governance
• Strengthening regulatory tools in key jurisdictions
• Improving governance and accountability within frontier AI companies
• Regulatory design and implementation
• Frontier safety frameworks
• Corporate governance and international coordination
• Policy options for increasingly autonomous AI agents
• Security and verification backbone for frontier AI

Technical AI Governance

Effective governance increasingly depends on technical facts and infrastructure: what systems can do, how much compute they use, where they are deployed, and whether development claims can be independently verified.

We support research across compute governance, auditing, monitoring, hardware-enabled verification, and technical standards. Key focus areas include:

• Identifying systems that cross risk-relevant thresholds
• Enabling privacy-preserving verification through hardware and compute providers
• Monitoring and auditing increasingly autonomous AI systems
• Translating governance objectives into technical mechanisms that function in real systems
• Informing policy design through collaboration with government organisations, AISIs, and frontier AI labs

Our goal is to ensure the governance of advanced AI relies on credible mechanisms for measurement, verification and enforcement, rather than trust or self-reporting alone.

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Application Timeline:

Applications for Winter 2027 are now open!

Application Deadline: 13th September 2026, 11:59pm Anywhere on Earth

Application Stages:

• Stage 1 – Written Application: Short essay questions (approximately 2 hours)
• Stage 2 – Interview Round 1: Top ~20% of candidates invited. Interviews held late September
• Stage 3 – Interview Round 2: Selected applicants invited for shorter interview. References will be contacted at this stage. Interviews held early October
• Stage 4 – Offers: After final acceptance, ERA works closely with the cohort to develop project ideas and match fellows with mentors

How to Apply:

• Visit the official Cambridge ERA by clicking the official website
• Create your applicant account with your email and password
• Complete your profile with personal information and educational background
• Upload your CV and any supporting documents (publications, research samples)
• Provide contact information for 2-3 professional references
• Submit your application via the online portal before

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