Arturo Falaschi PhD Fellowships 2027

Who can apply

National of an ICGEB Member State
For the Trieste lab: a BSc (Honours) degree. For the New Delhi and Cape Town labs: an MSc degree
A good working knowledge of English, supported by a proficiency certificate (TOEFL, Cambridge, or equivalent), unless English was your medium of instruction and your university certifies that officially
A written statement of support from the specific ICGEB Group Leader/PI you plan to work with is mandatory before applying; you must contact them directly first to agree a research project and confirm lab space
Every application is forwarded to the ICGEB Liaison Officer in your country of nationality for endorsement, which is required for an award. No stated age limit.

The application process isn’t a normal online form you fill out cold

Read the application process closely, because it isn’t a normal online form you fill out cold. Before you can even submit anything, you need to have already contacted a specific ICGEB Group Leader at your chosen lab (Trieste, New Delhi, or Cape Town), convinced them to support your proposed research project, and obtained their written statement of support; ICGEB’s own page calls this “mandatory.” Start that outreach well before the application window opens, since finding a supervisor willing to back your project is realistically the longer part of this process, not filling in the form itself. Only one application per call is accepted per candidate.

Your country matters twice over

Your country matters twice over here, not just once. First, you need to be a national of one of ICGEB’s 69 Member States to apply at all. Second, once you do apply, your application gets forwarded to the ICGEB Liaison Officer for your specific country, and their endorsement is a “fundamental requirement” for the fellowship to be awarded; a strong project and a willing supervisor aren’t enough on their own. Selection itself then weighs scientific excellence of the project, the strength of your CV, and the potential benefit to your home country together, not project quality alone.

The degree can be granted through several different partner universities

The PhD isn’t awarded by ICGEB itself; thanks to specific agreements, the degree is conferred through one of several partner academic institutions depending on where you’re based, including the Open University (UK), the University of Nova Gorica (Slovenia), the University of Trieste (Italy), Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and the University of Cape Town. Worth knowing if you care which institution’s name ends up on your eventual diploma.

The three lab locations aren’t interchangeable in what they require, pay, or house you in

The three lab locations aren’t interchangeable in what they require or pay. Trieste asks for a BSc (Honours) and pays the lowest stipend of the three in absolute terms (€1,500/month), while New Delhi and Cape Town both require an MSc already in hand. If you’re weighing locations, factor in local cost of living against the stipend rather than just comparing the raw numbers, since €1,500 in Italy and 16,500 ZAR in South Africa buy very different things. Housing support also differs sharply: Trieste runs no accommodation service of its own, offering only a contacts list for private housing; New Delhi has an on-campus guest house at a nominal twin-share rate; Cape Town arranges genuine accommodation support before you arrive.

The 3-year base can be extended, and the next full-track call is already dated

The base fellowship runs 3 years with the possibility of a 1-year extension, mirroring the structure of the Arturo Falaschi Postdoctoral Fellowships run through the same ICGEB centres. The next opportunity to apply for the full 3-year track is the January-March 2027 call. A shorter “short-term” PhD track exists on a separate September 2026 timeline, but that’s a different, more limited programme aimed at funding ongoing collaborative research rather than a complete PhD from the start.

Arturo Falaschi PhD Fellowships