Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowships - 2026 Internal Coordinated Process

This is a capped scheme and so candidates must get in touch with their departments as soon as possible as many will run their own selection processes before the below University-wide selection process deadline.

The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) has launched their annual call for applications to their Fellowship scheme. From the 2026/27 round, the scheme will move to a new two-stage application model, replacing the former single-stage full application model.

The first stage will be an Expression of Interest application. For this stage Oxford can submit up to four candidates and at least two of these candidates must self-identify as being from a group that is persistently underrepresented within the engineering profession in the UK. The RAEng have identified the following groups that are currently clearly significantly underrepresented in UK engineering research for this call:

• Women
• Black people, including those with any mixed ethnicity with Black ethnic background(s)
• Disabled people

Please note, for the 2026/27 round, Access Mentoring will be provided only to eligible applicants from underrepresented groups who have been invited to stage two: invited applications.

Aim and Scope of the Scheme

The RAEng Fellowships are designed to promote excellence in engineering. They provide support for high-quality early career engineers to encourage them to develop successful academic research careers.

The scheme provides funding for five years to encourage the best researchers to remain in the academic engineering sector. In addition to the direct financial support, the scheme offers:

• mentoring support from an Academy Fellow to offer advice on research and career development;
• reduction of teaching and administrative duties to dedicate time to research;
• training and additional funding opportunities;
• networking opportunities with other Research Fellows and Academy Fellows;
• being part of the RAEng Awardee Excellence Community.

The scheme provides funding for five years. From the 2026/27 round, the award value will increase. Each application will now be capped at a maximum contribution from the Academy of £800,000 over the five-year period, at 80% of full economic costs.

Research Fellowships can be held part-time at a minimum of 50% full-time equivalent. Requests for a part-time Research Fellowship must be made clear in the appropriate section on the Expression of Interest application.

• The proposed research project must be in an engineering subject area (civil, construction & environmental; materials & mining; chemical & process; aerospace; transport & mechanical; manufacturing & design; electrical & electronic; energy & power; medical & bioengineering; computing & communications).
• Early career researchers whose PhD/DPhil has been awarded (or the PhD/DPhil has been unconditionally approved) no more than four years before the submission deadline for the expression of interest. However, for this round only (2026/27) a margin of up to six months more than the four-year limit is acceptable and does not require justification or explanation of extenuating circumstances for those six months. This four years and six months period includes applicants’ work experience in academia or/and in industry in the UK or/and worldwide. Therefore, the final cut-off date is the 25th of December 2021. If the applicant PhD award date was earlier than the cut-off date, they will need to specify justification of extenuating circumstances.
• Applicants who have applied to the scheme before and were unsuccessful are eligible to reapply.
• Fellowships must begin between 1 August and 31 October 2027.

Candidates must get in touch with their Oxford host department in good time before the above deadline. Many departments will set earlier internal deadlines and run their own selection processes to meet the below cap, late expressions of interest can therefore not always be accommodated. For assistance with identifying the relevant departmental contact, please email research@mpls.ox.ac.uk.

Departments are capped at 6 candidates to the internal prioritisation, and candidates must be numerically ranked by their department. This cap includes candidates that are currently external to the University.

Candidates should upload their Expression of Interest application on IRAMS by 1pm, 11 May 2025:

The internal selection panel will include academics from a wide remit of engineering areas; however they may not be specialists in your research area. Candidates should therefore prepare their internal application for non-specialist reviewers.

The panel will score and comment on applications against the below assessment criteria:

1.       Engineering Research Vision

• The challenge or opportunity your research addresses in an Engineering context
• Timeliness – why it is important now
• Novelty – how the approach differs from or advances existing work
• Impact within the wider societal context
• What success would look like at the end of the Fellowship

 2.       Motivation, Profile and Fit

• How your research experiences, contributions and progression to date demonstrate your potential for research independence and leadership in engineering
• Motivation to apply for this Fellowship, and how this aligns with long-term aspirations, research interests and career goals?
• Explanation of why this Research Fellowship is the right next step

 3.       Engineering Contribution

• The engineering contribution of your proposed research, and how it advances engineering knowledge or practice
• The contribution your research will make to engineering capability or practice, and how this will benefit the engineering profession or wider society
• Clarity of the core engineering advance your research will deliver and how this progresses the state-of-the-art in engineering knowledge, capability or practice.
• Explanation of novelty and of who will benefit and how, including any relevance to the engineering profession and/or wider society.

 4.       Research Environment and Collaborations

• Explanation of the facilities and expertise that will be available to you. You should also cover what experience you have had and/ or plan to gain from other institutions and alternative working practices. For example, any time spent on secondment or on extended visits.
• Intended collaborators for the Fellowship and the role they will play in supporting your research and impact. How the collaborations will enhance the quality of your research and/or strengthen the pathway to impact.

 5.       Beneficiaries and Pathways to Impact

• Who will benefit from the research, and how?
• How the outcomes of the work could be used, adopted, or translated beyond academia and plans to communicate the research and engage with audiences outside the academic community

 6.       Diversity, Inclusion and Research Culture

• Explanation of what diversity and inclusion mean to you in the context of your research and working practices
• How these principles will be embedded in research design and delivery, in collaborations, and in any team development, and how this will contribute to a positive research culture in which people can thrive

Candidates are strongly encouraged to review the FAQ section on the RAEng webpage and consider the below questions (based on common internal panel feedback) when preparing their application:

• Does the research programme have strong alignment with the RAEng fellowship remit? Is the proposal better suited to another scheme/funder remit (e.g. UKRI)?
• Does the ambition, breadth and impact of the research proposal fit the remit of a 5-year independent fellowship programme?
• What is the development/technical training you would get from an independent fellowship vs. a postdoctoral position? How would you be developing an independent research niche separate from your current supervisor?
• What is the novel or step-change difference the research proposed will have on the research area? How does this stand-out from current work in this research area?
• What is the wider vision and impact of the work you are proposing? How will this be exploited and how will end-users/beneficiaries be engaged?
• Have you engaged all appropriate collaborators (within Oxford and beyond) to maximise the impact of your proposal?

For queries on the internal coordinated process, contact research@mpls.ox.ac.uk.