University College Cork is offering 19 fully funded PhD scholarships in AI and data science starting October 2026 — €25,000/year tax-free, fees covered, open to graduates from ALL disciplines. Apply now before positions fill.

Overview

This is one of the most unusual and genuinely exciting PhD funding announcements to come out of Europe in 2026 — and it’s one that most people outside Ireland haven’t heard about yet.

University College Cork (UCC) is offering 19 fully funded PhD scholarships starting 1 October 2026, as part of Ireland’s new Rinn Artificial Intelligence national research network. Each scholarship is worth €150,000 in total — that’s €25,000 per year, tax-free, for four years, with additional funding for conferences, equipment, and training. For non-EU international students, UCC will provide a full fee waiver on top of the stipend.

What makes this opportunity genuinely different from most AI PhD programmes is the breadth of disciplines invited to apply. These are not exclusively computer science positions. The 19 PhD topics span health, law, humanities, public health, environmental science, psychology, business, and engineering — alongside traditional AI and computer science themes. If your background is in social science, medicine, law, or the arts — and you’re interested in AI — there is very likely a position here that fits you.

Applications are being reviewed on a fortnightly basis until all 19 positions are filled. There is no single closing date. Some of these positions will fill before others. Move quickly.

What Is Rinn Artificial Intelligence?

The Research Ireland Rinn network was launched in June 2026 as Ireland’s flagship research and innovation infrastructure programme. Rinn Artificial Intelligence is its AI-focused arm — designed to serve as a national hub for data science and AI research with two core goals:

• Advance foundational, cutting-edge research in Data Science and AI
• Pursue open, international, interdisciplinary research aimed at addressing real societal challenges

This is not a single-lab initiative. It’s a national ecosystem involving multiple research institutions, industry partners, government bodies, and international collaborators. The €2.85 million invested in this cohort of 19 PhD students is part of a much larger, sustained national commitment to AI research in Ireland.

Being part of the founding cohort of Rinn AI students means being part of something that will define Irish AI research for years — and having the institutional backing and network that comes with that position.

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What You Get (Funding Package)

€25,000 per year, tax-free, in Cork, Ireland — where the cost of living is lower than Dublin — is a liveable, genuinely workable income for a PhD student. Combined with full fee coverage for international students, this package removes the two biggest financial barriers to pursuing a PhD in Europe.

The Training Programme — More Than Just a PhD

Beyond individual research, all 19 PhD students participate in a structured, cohort-based training programme that includes:

Transferable skills training:

• Communication skills
• Research ethics
• Entrepreneurship

Group activities:

• Hackathons
• Spin-out sprints (helping you understand how research becomes a product or company)

Domain-specific training:

• Machine learning
• Statistics
• Data management
• Programming
• Qualitative and digital policy methods

Peer-led learning:

• Research seminars
• Peer-designed workshops
• Reading groups

Career development:

• Dedicated career and skills activities throughout the programme
• Industry training placements
• Academic research visit to an internationally renowned collaborating institution

This is a PhD with a built-in professional development infrastructure — not four years alone in a lab. By the time you graduate, you’ll have research expertise, industry exposure, international experience, and a cohort of peers working across the full breadth of AI applications.

The 19 PhD Topics — Full List

These positions cover seven research themes and welcome applicants from a remarkably wide range of academic backgrounds.

AI for Digital Humanities & Heritage (1 position)

Topic: The impact of AI on education, specifically in museums and heritage
Supervisor: Dr Orla Murphy — o.murphy@ucc.ie
School: English and Digital Humanities

Climate & Sustainability (2 positions)

Topic 1: Data centres and the energy transition — modelling the energy and climate impacts of AI-driven digital expansion in Ireland
Supervisor: Dr Hannah E. Daly — h.daly@ucc.ie
School: Engineering & Architecture

Topic 2: Leveraging AI and data technologies to understand air pollution and greenspace in urban areas at hyperlocal resolution
Supervisor: Dr Marguerite Nyhan — marguerite.nyhan@ucc.ie
School: Engineering & Architecture

Cultural & Political Analytics (1 position)

Topic: Data-driven analysis of Irish writer Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) — her correspondence, novels, and writing for children
Supervisor: Professor Claire Connolly — claireconnolly@ucc.ie
School: English and Digital Humanities

Digital Healthtech (4 positions)

Topic 1: AI analysis of fetal heart rate during labour to predict moderate to severe brain injury in full-term pregnancies
Supervisor: Professor Geraldine Boylan — G.Boylan@ucc.ie
School: Medicine

Topic 2: AI tools integrating advanced imaging, intestinal barrier assessment, and multimodal data to predict disease progression in inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer
Supervisor: Professor Marietta Iacucci — miacucci@ucc.ie
School: Medicine

Topic 3: Multi-omics modelling for maternal and child health — developing screening tools for adverse pregnancy outcomes and childhood neurodevelopmental conditions
Supervisor: Dr Jane English (with Dr Eric Wolsztynski) — jane.english@ucc.ie
School: Medicine (and Mathematical Sciences)

Topic 4: AI-enabled learning analytics to enhance training and education of healthcare professionals
Supervisor: Professor Emeritus George Shorten — G.Shorten@ucc.ie
School: Medicine

Human-AI Collaboration & Cognition (1 position)

Topic: A qualitative investigation of AI-powered collaboration in flexible teams — how AI tools shape coordination and cooperation across time and locations
Supervisor: Professor Luigina Ciolfi — lciolfi@ucc.ie
School: Applied Psychology

Human-Centred AI Design (2 positions)

Topic 1: Involving people with intellectual disabilities in the design of AI-incorporating support technologies
Supervisor: Dr Laura Maye — laura.maye@ucc.ie
School: Computer Science & IT

Topic 2: Human-centred AI and visualisation tools for large-scale underwater acoustic data — for environmental and conservation policy
Supervisor: Dr Rosane Minghim — rosane.minghim@ucc.ie
School: Computer Science & IT

Optimisation & Reasoning (4 positions)

Topic 1: Human-centric reasoning and decision support — providing explanations and guidance for solving complex problems
Supervisor: Professor Ken Brown — k.brown@ucc.ie
School: Computer Science & IT

Topic 2: Professional identity, values-based clinical reasoning, and human-AI collaboration in healthcare — including gendered patterns of AI acceptance
Supervisor: Professor Ciara Heavin — c.heavin@ucc.ie
School: Cork University Business School

Topic 3: Hybrids of optimisation and machine learning — Bayesian/combinatorial methods, reinforcement learning applied to diplomacy or game theory
Supervisor: Dr Steven Prestwich — s.prestwich@ucc.ie
School: Computer Science & IT

Topic 4: Trustworthy foundational models for medical diagnosis based on spectroscopy signals
Supervisor: Dr Andrea Visentin — andrea.visentin@ucc.ie
School: Computer Science & IT

Population & Public Health (1 position)

Topic: Integrating different health data sources to inform policy and practice in chronic disease
Supervisor: Professor Patricia Kearney — patricia.kearney@ucc.ie
School: Public Health

Trustworthy AI & Data Science (3 positions)

Topic 1: How individual and community safety is conceptualised in the regulation of AI, with focus on law enforcement and security contexts
Supervisor: Professor Nessa Lynch — nessa.lynch@ucc.ie
School: Law

Topic 2: Reliable agentic AI for science — next-generation multi-agent coordination and harness engineering for trustworthy scientific AI
Supervisor: Dr Harry Nguyen — Harry.Nguyen@ucc.ie
School: Computer Science & IT

Topic 3: AI-generated speech detection — novel approaches to deepfake audio detection and authenticity verification
Supervisor: Professor Utz Roedig — u.roedig@ucc.ie
School: Computer Science & IT

Who Can Apply?

This programme explicitly welcomes applications from graduates across a wide range of disciplines:

• Arts & Humanities
• Business and Education
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Health Sciences
• Life Science & Environment
• Mathematics & Statistics
• Social Science & Law

The matching of applicant background to topic is important. A law graduate applying for the AI safety regulation project makes sense. A health sciences graduate applying for the maternal health multi-omics project makes sense. A computer science graduate applying for the AI speech detection project makes sense. Match your background to the right topic — don’t apply generically.

UCC is committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion and particularly encourages applications from underrepresented groups. This is an explicit invitation to applicants from Africa, from non-traditional academic backgrounds, and from communities that have historically been underrepresented in European doctoral programmes.

How to Apply

Application form: https://forms.gle/U6eQcbuyPhvKrxXW7

In the form, indicate:

• The Research Theme you are applying to
• The Supervisor Name for your chosen topic

Important notes:

• Applications are reviewed fortnightly — there is no single deadline. Positions fill as strong candidates are identified. Apply as soon as you are ready.
• Due to the volume of applications, only candidates invited to interview will receive a response
• Candidates who are successful at interview will then need to apply formally to UCC’s host institution in line with standard graduate admission requirements

Application Tips — How to Stand Out

Choose the right topic

Don’t apply to multiple topics at once hoping something sticks. Read each topic description carefully. Identify the one that most closely aligns with your academic background, research experience, and genuine intellectual interest. A focused, specific application for one position will always outperform a scattered approach.

Contact the supervisor first

Before submitting the form, consider emailing the supervisor of your chosen topic with a brief, targeted introduction — who you are, your academic background, and specifically why their project interests you. This is not required, but a prior email exchange can make your formal application much warmer. Keep the email to three focused paragraphs maximum.

For general questions about the programme: Professor Barry O’Sullivan — osullivan.barry@ucc.ie

Show the connection clearly

Your application should make it immediately obvious why your background is relevant to this specific topic. Whether you’re a law graduate applying for AI regulation research or a computer science graduate applying for speech deepfake detection, the connection between your training and the research topic needs to be explicit, not assumed.

Why Ireland? Why UCC?

University College Cork is one of Ireland’s leading research universities, consistently ranked in the top 2% of universities globally. Its location in Cork — Ireland’s second city — offers a genuinely excellent quality of life: affordable relative to Dublin, vibrant, culturally rich, and with a strong and growing technology sector that includes major Irish and multinational employers.

Ireland is an English-speaking EU member state, which matters significantly for international students. Post-PhD, Ireland offers strong pathways to employment in the European tech sector, with major AI, cloud, and pharmaceutical companies headquartered in Cork and Dublin. The country’s graduate visa schemes and EU freedom of movement create opportunities that few other European study destinations match.

For Nigerian and African students, especially, Ireland has become an increasingly welcoming destination for international graduate students, and UCC’s explicit EDI commitment in this recruitment round is a genuine signal, not marketing language.

Quick Summary Table

Apply Now

Positions are filling on a rolling basis. There is no deadline to wait for — every week you delay is a week closer to some of these positions being gone.

Apply here →

Identify your topic. Email the supervisor. Submit your application.

And if this isn’t your opportunity — if you’re not at the right stage, or this isn’t your field — share it with someone in your network who is finishing a Master’s in computer science, medicine, law, environmental science, psychology, or any of the other eligible disciplines. Nineteen funded PhD positions at a top European university, starting October 2026, with a tax-free stipend and full fee waiver for international students, is not something that crosses most people’s feeds.

Click here for more information and application