Enrichment scheme

Information sessions

Further details about the 2024/25 Call were made available at our Open Event on 24 November and webinar on 1 December. You can view the recordings of both below. 

We recently held a webinar to assist supervisors to better support their students with the application process. You can watch a recording of the webinar here.

Changes for 2024/25 Enrichment scheme

As the Enrichment scheme enters its ninth year, The Alan Turing Institute announces that for the 2024/25 academic year we will be offering the following options:

Enrichment Scheme Placement award (in-person)

The Placement award offers candidates the opportunity to undertake a 6 or 9 month placement at The Alan Turing Institute offices in London. This award carries an expectation that holders will engage in person at the office for a minimum of 8 days per month.

Up to 50 awards will be offered and will become active in October 2024 or January 2025 at the candidate’s choice. The Placement award consists of a monthly financial award to facilitate relocating or commuting to the Turing offices. This amount is dependent on a student’s location, please refer to the Call document for further information. Placement awardees will also have access to the Enrichment Training Support fund of up to £1000 per student.

Enrichment Scheme Community award (remote)

For 2024/25, we are reintroducing the remote access Community award which provides access to The Alan Turing Institute’s online community and resources. Up to 20 Community awards will be available and will become active in October 2024. Community awardees will also have access to the Enrichment Training Support fund of up to £1000 per student. The Call for Community award applications is now open, you can find the Call Document and FAQs at the bottom of this page. Students are not able to apply for both Placement and Community awards. 

Alignment with focus research areas 

New for the 2024 call is the alignment of successful Enrichment students in focus research areas for the duration of their time on the scheme. This alignment to our strategic research areas is done to support the creation of meaningful interactions between students and researchers by linking students with a research team. Students will be aligned with a project, but this won't be exclusive to their own PhD research or further collaboration at The Alan Turing Institute. The alignment aims to foster the student’s network and knowledge exchange. 

“The opportunities for engagement and networking the Turing Enrichment scheme provided were second to none. From “Lunch and Learn” seminars to taking part in the AI UK conference (as a presenter, facilitator, and panel discussant), there were so many experiences that substantially enhanced my studies. Altogether, through the Enrichment scheme I was able to receive world-class training, I expanded my (research) horizon, and became part of the extraordinary community the Turing is fostering.”

Why join the Enrichment scheme?

The Enrichment scheme is designed to give students the opportunity to enhance, refresh, and broaden their research with The Alan Turing Institute’s community and in recognition of their place within the UK’s growing data science and AI research community. Award holders receive funding to physically or remotely access The Alan Turing Institute’s facilities whilst also building both online communities and facilitating other activities such as attending training courses, going to conferences and visiting collaborators.

The award should support and enhance the current work towards the student’s PhD thesis and be supported by the student’s supervisor at  their home university. Students usually begin their engagement with us in their second or third years of a typical doctorate, to further the work they are undertaking for their research project. Students must be in the active research phase of their PhD for the duration of the award. There is no ‘typical’ Enrichment student, and we welcome students from a broad range of disciplines. For 2024/25 we aim to align students with projects that sit under The Alan Turing Institute’s focus research areas. Applicants are asked to offer preferences from a list on the application portal; no guarantees are given about preferences, and we encourage applicants to think broadly about the project choices they make. Full details about the projects can be found in the appendix of the Call document.

Collaboration and networking

Enrichment students have the opportunity to find new collaborators for their research and are not restricted to the projects they will be aligned with. Collaboration and networking are encouraged through Interest Groups, Data Study Groups, seminars, events, workshops and engagement with the wider community.

Learning and applying new methodologies

We encourage our Enrichment students to learn and apply new methodologies to enrich their research. Learning is supported through a variety of training activities and upskilling opportunities coordinated throughout the year and available for the Turing and wider research community.

Students may apply to access computing resources. Please note that applications for computing resources are subject to a review process by the Turing Research Computing team.

Develop research independence

Enrichment students have an opportunity to develop their research independence as they engage in the programme. With support from their existing supervisors to spend time away from their usual work environment, students are able to engage in new research groups and with new ideas which can be beneficial to future research output.

An ethical core

Considering the ethical implications of research is a core part of all the work at The Alan Turing Institute. All Enrichment students are encouraged to examine the ethical issues in their own projects and discuss them with others. Students are encouraged to engage with Turing Research Ethics Policy (TREx). The Alan Turing Institute as well as contributing to ongoing discussions regarding fairness and transparency through projects such as The Turing Way, our open-source guide and gold-standard in developing reproducible data science projects.

Further benefits of the Enrichment scheme include:

• Up to £1,000 Enrichment Training Support fund is accessible to all Enrichment students, to be used flexibly and support their doctoral studies. The financial Placement award contributes to costs students may incur to meet the requirement of 8 days in-person per month during their placements. There are also Access and Hardship funds available. 

• Full induction to The Alan Turing Institute community and access to training throughout the year. 

• Access to a range of events, seminars, reading groups, and workshops delivered by leaders in research, government, and industry – see a selection of what is happening at the Institute on our events pages. These opportunities may vary dependent on award.

• Opportunity to apply for a high specification laptop for the duration of the ‘in person’ placement and access to The Alan Turing Institute offices in the British Library (Placement award only). 

“In addition to developing my core research skills by attending Turing courses such as the excellent RSE programme, I have gained a huge amount of insight and social support from being in a vibrant physical space filled with other research students. This informal mixing and sharing of ideas has helped me to further ground my research in the wider AI field, which will benefit me greatly when writing up my thesis over the coming year.”

Tom Bewley, University of Bristol, 2021 Enrichment Student

Who are we looking for?

There is no typical Enrichment student. We welcome applications from students who will embrace the opportunity to enrich their own research through The Alan Turing Institute environment and network. We encourage applications from a broad range of academic disciplines and backgrounds, especially those whose research is multi-disciplinary, and applications align with the Institute’s focus research areas. Students should consider how they would best utilise the Enrichment Training Support fund to support their current research and contribute to their doctoral work and what they can offer the wider community and network. You can see examples of the research our Enrichment students have conducted and what they got out of their placements in the yearbook from our 2023/24 cohort.

Students will remain enrolled at their university during the Enrichment scheme and must have the support of their supervisor and university. Students are not able to apply for internships during the placement, as this would require them to stop the clock on their PhD, which will make them ineligible for the scheme. 

Potential applicants should review the relevant Call Document (under Important Documents at the bottom of this page) for full eligibility and assessment criteria before preparing their application. We also recommend reading the FAQs where full details of our support package is available.

Open event recordings  

Application process

Candidates should read the Enrichment scheme information on our website including the relevant Call Document and FAQs which can be found at the bottom of this page.

1. Candidates should discuss the scheme with their supervisor and university department to gain their approval to participate. We recommend candidates share the Guidance for Universities and Supervisors with a relevant member of their department and their supervisors. 

2. Candidates apply directly to the Turing through our application portal. Please choose either the Placement award or Community award application.

3. Applications are reviewed under the supervision of the Academic Recruitment team at The Alan Turing Institute. Successful candidates are usually made offers in mid-late May.

4. All students will sign an Enrichment scheme Terms and Conditions. For Placement awardees, the universities will sign a Funding Agreement and students complete a screening process (Full details on the pre-employment screening process can be requested from [email protected])

Applications for the 2024 Enrichment scheme close on 17 January 2024 12pm (noon) GMT. Applications for the 2024 Enrichment scheme: Community award close on 31 January 2024 12pm (noon) GMT. No extensions to this deadline will be given.

The Alan Turing Institute is committed to championing equality, diversity, and inclusion. If you have questions about the Enrichment scheme or require any adjustments to the application process, please contact our team on [email protected] or on 0203 862 3578.

For more information about how we process applicants' data please see our transparency notice.

Important documents

• Enrichment Scheme Call Document: Placement award
• Guidance for Universities and Supervisors: Placement award
• FAQs: Placement award
• Enrichment scheme Call Document: Community award
• Guidance for Universities and Supervisors: Community award
• FAQs: Community award
• Enrichment scheme focus research areas appendix