Intelligent Earth: UKRI AI CDT in AI for the Environment

The centre groups its work into five overlapping themes: climate, biodiversity, natural hazards, environmental solutions and core AI research. Applicants choose at least one theme on the form and are encouraged to say which is their main interest, but the themes have no hard edges and interests may change during the first year.

Instead of applying to a predefined project, students are matched with supervisors and partners during the first year and write their project proposal with their own supervisory team. Each project has an environmental science supervisor, an AI supervisor from a different department and an adviser from a non-academic partner, who also hosts a secondment. Partners listed by the centre include the Met Office, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the European Space Agency, the British Antarctic Survey, the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Google, IBM Research and NVIDIA.

The first year opens with an induction week, then core courses: foundations of AI and machine learning for environmental scientists, and foundations of the environmental themes for data scientists. Responsible AI runs through every course, alongside computational and professional skills. Teaching moves from introductory lectures to hands-on work with AI tools and environmental datasets, with students in interdisciplinary groups tackling problems of increasing complexity. The taught modules usually last one or two weeks each and fill about ten weeks in the autumn and eight in the spring.

In the second half of the first year each student carries out a three-month research project with a potential DPhil supervisor. Advanced cross-cohort courses follow, together with weekly Intelligent Earth seminars, annual hackathons run with the Frontier Development Lab and partners, and a two-day annual conference. Later-year students can help teach the programme. The full four years must be completed; start dates cannot be moved from October and the programme cannot be shortened.

Applying to the CDT automatically puts you in the running for a funded place. A studentship covers course fees (shared by UKRI and the University), a tax-free living allowance from UKRI and a research and training support grant; students with home fee status also receive the TechExpert enhancement of 10,000 pounds a year. EU students are classed as overseas for fees, and only a limited number of overseas students can be funded.

The centre wants quantitative applicants from biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, earth, environmental and geographical sciences, geology, geophysics, mathematics, meteorology, oceanography, physics, statistics or related fields such as data science. There is no age limit, and the centre commits to improving access for groups under-represented at Oxford and to supporting students with caring responsibilities by keeping required in-person sessions within core hours where possible.