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Fellowships
Join our department where cutting-edge research meets an inspiring collaborative environment. Our dedicated staff and state-of-the-art research facilities provide the ideal environments for innovative exploration and discovery. We offer comprehensive support to our research fellows, including mentorship and access to a network of leading in-house experts. The department has a strong track record supporting excellent candidates for research fellowships from the UKRI, Royal Society, EPSRC, Royal Academy of Engineering, The Leverhulme Trust, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and other selected fellowships.
- UKRI Future Leader Fellowships
The Future Leaders Fellowship scheme: round 10 from UKRI provide funding of up to 7 years to support ambitious research and innovation, and the scheme is for early career researchers or innovators looking to establish or transition to independence.
UCL are limited to submitting 10 applications as an institution, so there will be an internal prioritisation process put in place. All applicants must use the UCL central submission platform to submit their application by Tuesday noon 11thFebruary. UCL will only consider applications submitted using the central submission platform. Late submissions are not permitted.
Internal applicants can submit their application data and upload their completed EoI form to the central submission platform for internal applicants. External applicants can submit their application data to the central submission platform for external applicants. External applicants also must send their completed EoI form to us at ovpr.beams@ucl.ac.ukbefore the deadline.
Applicants from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply for this scheme.
Below are some resources to help applicants:
- Recording of the UCL UKRI FLF R9 Webinar in which past/current FLF holders shared their experience and tips on application
- How to Write a Good Fellowship Proposal
- How to Write a Good Narrative CV
- Royal Society University Research Fellowship, and fellowships from the Royal Academy of Engineering and other funders
Royal Society’s University Research Fellowship
Each year we welcome expressions of interest for the Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF). Applicants for the URF should be exceptional postdoctoral researchers with between three to eight years of actual research experience since their PhD by the closing date of the round (i.e. date on which the degree was approved by the board of graduate studies). Career breaks will be taken into consideration (see the Royal Society’s page for more information). The RS will open the scheme in July each year. As the number of candidates allowed to submit to the RS is limited, UCL Chemistry evaluates all applicants and shortlists those who best match the selection criteria of the RS.
The important dates for a URF application are:
Deadline for expression of interest (UCL) 2 June 2025 (12:00 BST) Applications finalised (UCL hard deadline) 14 July 2025 Call closing date 10 September 2025 (15:00 BST) Details about the submission of expressions of interest and the shortlisting process are provided on a page with our guidelines for the preparation of expressions of interest (EoIs) for research fellowships.
Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship
The RAEng Research Fellowships support outstanding early-career researchers to become future research leaders in engineering. The next call will open in 2025. As in previous years, applicants will be shortlisted as UCL can only put forth a limited number of candidates to the RAEng. Details of the shortlisting process will be made available in May 2025 (TBC). The deadline for submitting an Expression of Interest for the shortlisting will be early June 2025 (TBC).
Other Fellowships
Interested candidates are requested to prepare an expression of interest following our guidelines and to contact Professor Stefan Howorka (s.howorka@ucl.ac.uk) approximately three months before the intended submissions deadline. Before you contact us, please make sure you satisfy the eligibility criteria for the fellowship you intend to apply for.
- Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, and 1851 Research Fellowship of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851
The Fellowships are offered to postdoctoral chemists with a maximum of two year postdoctoral experience of research at the beginning of the fellowship. As candidate are in the early stages of their career, the fellowship helps to initiate a programme of original and independent research.
UCL Chemistry welcomes expressions of interest for the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and 1851 Research Fellowship schemes. To ensure that the Department of Chemistry supports the best candidates for the schemes, we carry out a competitive shortlisting. Prospective candidates will be evaluated following the deadlines below:
Deadline for expression of interest 1 October 2024 Decisions made and candidates informed 4 November 2024 Call closing date, 1851 Research Fellowship 6 January 2025 Call closing date, Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship 20 February 2025 Details about the shortlisting process and submission of expressions of interest are provided on our page with our guidelines for the preparation of expressions of interest (EoIs) for research fellowships.
- Newton International Fellowship
The Newton International Fellowship from the Royal Society supports non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.
UCL Chemistry welcomes expressions of interest for the fellowship. To ensure that the best candidate(s) for the schemes are supported, UCL Chemistry carries out a competitive shortlisting before the submission to the Royal Society. Prospective candidates will be evaluated following the deadlines below:
Deadline for expression of interest 7 January 2026 Decisions made and candidates informed before 14 January 2026 Call closing date, Newton International Fellowship March 2026 (TBD) Details about the shortlisting process and submission of expressions of interest (EoI) are provided on our page with our guidelines for the preparation of EoIs for research fellowships. Additional key information about the fellowship is available at the Royal Society website. The shortlisting at UCL Chemistry will consider the track record and the research topic, among others. Recipients of the fellowship will usually have published several first-authorship papers at the time of submission. Additionally, the proposed research topic is typically of general interest to the wider public. The selected candidate(s) will receive feedback and support from UCL Chemistry on how to further tailor their application to the funder.
Meet our Research Fellows
Dr Adam Clancy (Royal Society University Research Fellow)
The dynamic arrangement of molecules at solid surfaces is important for a wide range of applications including batteries and paint. The molecular arrangement is well understood for large and flat surfaces, but their behaviour changes when the surface size approaches nanoscale dimensions.
In my Royal Society University Research Fellowship at UCL Chemistry, I am using nanomaterials as generic platform to study molecular arrangement at nano-rough interfaces. Nanomaterials are ideal as their high surface areas bind considerably more molecules than flat materials and hence yield a stronger signal to disentangle from the bulk liquid. By analysing arranged molecules with advanced techniques including neutron scattering and Raman spectroscopy, we will develop a better understanding of nanoscale interfaces to improve supercapacitors and other electronic devices.
Dr Michael Booth (Royal Society University Research Fellow)
DNA and RNA form the basis for many therapeutic and experimental technologies, including gene editing and silencing, several aspects of nanotechnology, aptamers and their applications, and cell-free protein expression. It would be advantageous to control the function of these technologies, as this would greatly expand their application in biology and medicine by reducing toxic on/off-target effects and systemic toxicity.
With support from my Royal Society University Research Fellowship, the main focus of our research is the generation of remote-controlled nucleic acids under the control of various stimuli, including temperature, magnetism, enzymes, chemical signals, and multiple wavelengths of light. These nucleic acids will be optimized to function with molecular machines, drug delivery, sensing, and siRNA and CRISPR technologies. In the future, this universal chemical method for controlling DNA and RNA structure and function may form the basis of controllable therapeutics and new technologies for basic research.
Dr Daniel Whitaker (Royal Society University Research Fellow)
How did life start on Earth? A key difference between living and inanimate matter is Darwinian evolution, the capacity to reproduce and survive preferentially in the presence of a selection pressure. Nucleic acids, the information storage polymers of life, are the simplest biological molecules inherently capable of Darwinian evolution, but evolution has not yet been demonstrated without the machinery of life. The monomers which make up nucleic acids are chiral – like left hands and right hands, they are not superimposable on their mirror images. Remarkably, nucleic acids are composed entirely of monomers with the same chirality – they are homochiral. How and why this should be is an unsolved mystery.
In my University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society, I will test the hypothesis that homochirality is a product of Darwinian evolution of nucleic acids. I will investigate how chirally mixed nucleic acids can replicate without the machinery of life and combine this with simple selection pressures to build a chemical system capable of evolution towards homochirality. Ultimately, understanding how systems of nucleic acids become capable of Darwinian evolution will bring us to the cusp understanding the origin of life on Earth, and may even allow us to design synthetic life.
Dr Emma Wolpert (Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow)
Organic electronic devices are energy-efficient and sustainable alternatives for many traditional power-consuming electronics. The use of organic electronic devices is, however, limited due to the challenging design of their chemical structures and favourable functional properties. These problems may be alleviated by computational modelling, but the associated high computational costs currently thwart the high throughput manner needed to train AI models and develop devices with favourable properties.
In my Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, I will develop a new and computationally inexpensive methodology for modelling the structure of organic electronic materials and devices. By coupling the modelling with AI, vast amounts of data will be created and analysed quickly to speed up screening and discovery of organic materials. This methodological integration will help create new energy-efficient and renewable organic electronic devices for a wide range of consumer and business applications.
Dr Hugh Burton (Royal Society University Research Fellow)
Shining light on molecules can promote electrons into excited states, providing energy to catalyse reactions or enable chemical reactions. Interactions between molecules and light are often too complicated to analyse with experiments alone, and thus theoretical chemistry is essential for understanding light-driven processes. However, modelling molecular excitations requires complex quantum mechanics that scales exponentially with the number of electrons, meaning that approximate models are essential.
In my Royal Society University Research Fellowship at UCL Chemistry, I will develop new techniques to model interactions between molecules and light by combining a geometric perspective on excited electrons with emerging quantum algorithms. I will use the differential geometry of electronic structure to investigate the electron correlation in excited states, derive new excited-state approximations, and develop physical intuition into how future quantum computers systematically encode electronic states. These advances will lay the foundation for new computational techniques to predict molecular excitations, transforming our ability to understand phenomena such as light-driven reactions and photocatalysis.
Dr Tim Hele (Royal Society University Research Fellow)
Smartphone batteries commonly go flat after a few hours' screen time because the screens’ pixels, made of organic light-emitting diodes, are inefficient at converting electrical energy into light. Finding better organic emitters is challenging due the shortage of rational design rules which help pick the most efficient molecules within the large chemical space.
In my Royal Society University Research Fellowship, I design, predict, and explain highly efficient electronically active molecules based on fundamental theory and computational simulations. One key innovation has been combining electronic structure theory with intensity borrowing perturbation theory to predict how molecular alterations will alter the excited state energies and intensities. In addition, we have invented the fastest known algorithm to predict the excited states of radicals which is highly accurate and also spin pure. These breakthroughs will pave the way for the molecular design of highly efficient molecules for optoelectronic and quantum computing applications.
Dr James Attwater
Understanding the origins of biological life on Earth is of fundamental interest. The quest also has the potential to guide the search for life beyond Earth, and to inspire the development of artificial biomimetic systems. But how life was established and sustained by chemical processes remains a scientific mystery, considering that biology is a sophisticated out-of-equilibrium system. Tackling this question requires model molecular systems that harness chemistry for biological behaviour.
In my Royal Society University Research Fellowship at UCL Chemistry, I will explore how RNA – a central component of our biochemistry – can provide answers on the origin of life. I will utilize geochemistry, organic chemistry, and molecular evolution to find new ways for RNA to drive key life processes by engaging as a reagent, scaffold, or catalyst. A focus is also to see how RNA evolution differs under the influence of new ‘prebiotic’ chemistries.