Industry Sponsorship is our primary model for companies to engage with the Fusion Engineering CDT.

You define a research challenge in collaboration with an academic supervisor, and we recruit a high-calibre STEM PhD or EngD researcher. This is a cost-effective, high-impact way to strengthen your research and development pipeline, access university expertise, and grow in-house capability.

The CDT advertises projects in Winter and Spring for a student to start the following September. Once the project scope has been agreed with an academic supervisor, the project is submitted to the CDT via the Call for Projects Form. This form can be submitted by an academic or an industry sponsor. Our current Call for Projects is for students to start October 2027.

What you gain as a sponsor

A tailored research project and a future-ready researcher.

• Targeted high-quality research in a project that directly aligns with your research and development priorities.
  Define a bespoke project, aligned to your strategic objectives and technical priorities.
• Access to leading university equipment and academic technical expertise.
  Benefit from the knowledge, equipment, and facilities of leading UK fusion research universities.
• A future specialist embedded in your context.
  The researcher can work closely with your team, spend time on-site, and potentially join your organisation at the end of the project.
• Value-add.
  Uniquely, studentship contracts do not incur ‘overheads’ (bench fees, academic time, technician time, commercial-rate facilities access costs) - hence they represent a very cost competitive route to access university expertise and facilities to undertake R&D. Sponsors can host their student for an on-site placement, to use facilities and services. The CDT provides a £5,000 travel/accommodation budget for the placement.

Your investment

£18,750 + VAT per year over four years (Total: £75,000 + VAT per project)

This is matched by approximately £140,000 of co-funding from the CDT through its training and research resources that add significant value to the project.

This 2:1 leverage ensures excellent return on investment, while keeping the financial commitment predictable and spread over four years.

A studentship has 3 main cost components; 50% Home tuition fees, Stipend and Research Training Support Grant.

The whole cost of each studentship is approximately £200k - hence the cash investment leverage for a project sponsor is 2.5.

The sponsor company contracts to fund the studentship via a studentship contract to agree the invoice schedule (usually ‘annual payments in advance’).

Flexible options to enhance the partnership

You can customise the level of engagement:

• Industrial supervision – Help steer the research and ensure relevance throughout
• On-site placements – Host the student for part of the project duration
• Top-up stipend or budget – You can top up the stipend above the standard UKRI rate if you wish to, or you can top up the project budget if you expect to have enhanced facilities or materials access fees.

Each project is contracted individually with the host university to agree terms and conditions for project inputs, outputs and cost.

Where will the research take place?

Our students can be based at:

• Any of our four Hub Universities: Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, or, any other UK universities via our Community Studentship Scheme. This flexibility allows us to bring together the right expertise, regardless of location, and co-supervise across institutions when needed.
• Your industrial setting: you should support the student to spend time on university campus, to build strong relationships with their research colleagues.
• A doctoral project is 4-years long, and written up in a thesis report and examined. The thesis must contribute new knowledge to the research topic. We fund projects that are relevant to fusion energy engineering, but the research can arise in another sector and have a strong fusion relevance.
• We ask the sponsor to provide a supervisor, to have regular interaction during the project. Sponsors are also invited to join interviews for candidate selection.