The ELLIS PhD program is a key pillar of the ELLIS initiative whose goal is to foster and educate the best talent in machine learning and related research areas by pairing outstanding students with leading academic and industrial researchers in Europe. The program also offers a variety of networking and training activities, including summer schools and workshops. Each PhD student is co-supervised by one ELLIS fellow/scholar or unit faculty and one ELLIS fellow/scholar, unit faculty or member based in different European countries. Students conduct an exchange of at least 6 months with the international advisor during their degree. One of the advisors may also come from industry, in which case the student will collaborate closely with the industry partner, and spend min. 6 months conducting research at the industrial lab. A new interdisciplinary track has also recently been introduced, in which students are co-supervised by an ELLIS fellow/scholar and a tenured faculty (if they are not an ELLIS fellow/scholar themselves), whose main expertise is different than machine learning/AI (for instance, biology, law or social sciences and humanities).

The most important information at a glance:

Advisor registration phase: ELLIS PIs were invited to sign up by September 23 via the special advisor registration link (see email below) but the deadline is flexible as long as they sign up before November 15. It would however be best to register in early October (when the portal opens to applicants) to give prospective students a chance to see as many advisors' profiles as possible.
*Note that recruiting via the ELLIS portal is open to Fellows, Scholars and Unit Faculty. ELLIS members are not eligible to participate, unless they have been nominated as part of a Unit (i.e. all persons listed on the central ELLIS units pages, see ellis.eu/units >> find your unit, are eligible to register). Registrations will be processed in the course of the next weeks.

Student application phase: The portal will open for students in October. Please note: do not share the advisor registration link with students. Students will need to register via a different link that will be published on this page once the portal opens: https://ellis.eu/news/ellis-phd-program-call-for-applications-2024.

November 15: Deadline for students to apply

November-December: Central review period during which Advisors and their appointed Evaluators (postdocs) are expected to review a batch of applications

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