For many African scientists, the challenge is not a shortage of consequential research questions. Across the continent, researchers are confronting problems in climate resilience, environmental sustainability, engineering, fundamental biology, mathematics, energy, agriculture and other fields where new scientific approaches could produce profound results. The greater challenge is often gaining sustained access to the advanced computational methods, interdisciplinary networks and research resources needed to pursue those questions at their full potential.
The Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science African Faculty Fellowship at the University of Michigan has been designed around that gap.
Led by the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society (MIDAS) with extensive support from the University of Michigan’s African Studies Center, the two-year fellowship brings African faculty members and equivalent researchers into an international research environment where artificial intelligence becomes not merely an object of study, but a tool for scientific discovery.
For the 2027 cohort, the University of Michigan will open its application portal on August 17, 2026. Phase 1 applications are due October 5, 2026, with selected candidates proceeding to a second phase whose deadline is November 23, 2026.
What distinguishes the fellowship is its ambition beyond the individual researcher. Fellows are expected not only to advance a significant research project, but eventually to return to Africa with the skills, collaborations and resources to strengthen AI-enabled scientific research within their own institutions and wider research communities.
A Fellowship Built Around Two Continents
The fellowship runs for two years.
During the first year, each African Faculty Fellow spends approximately 12 months in residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, working on AI-enabled scientific or engineering research. Fellows receive specialist training, collaborate with University of Michigan researchers and become part of the MIDAS research community. During the second year, they return to Africa, where they continue their research while implementing training and capacity-building activities at their home institutions and beyond.
This structure is central to the fellowship’s purpose.
Rather than designing a programme in which expertise permanently flows away from Africa, the fellowship deliberately builds a return phase into the award. The goal is to create research capacity that remains useful long after the fellowship itself ends—through new courses, research collaborations, workshops, scientific networks, student training and AI-enabled projects based at African institutions.
The University of Michigan describes the programme’s broader goals as enabling AI-driven scientific breakthroughs, particularly those with significance for Africa; developing sustained AI-in-science research capacity on the continent; and establishing enduring collaborations between African researchers and institutions and the University of Michigan.
It is an approach that treats African researchers not simply as recipients of technical training, but as scientific leaders capable of determining where and how AI should be applied to some of the most important research questions facing their fields.
What Fields Are Eligible?
Applicants do not need to be traditional computer scientists.
The fellowship defines artificial intelligence broadly, encompassing methodologies such as machine learning, robotics, Bayesian inference and simulation. What matters is the applicant’s ability to apply appropriate AI methods to an important scientific or engineering problem.
For the 2027 cohort, proposed research may fall within:
- Biological and biomedical science
- Earth and environmental science
- Engineering
- Physical science and mathematics
There is an important limitation for biomedical applicants. Proposals primarily aimed at developing or improving the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of disease fall outside the fellowship’s scope. Eligible biological and biomedical projects should instead focus on fundamental biological processes, disease mechanisms or disease propagation using approaches such as computational, laboratory or animal models.
Crucially, an applicant’s PhD can be in any discipline. It is the field and scientific relevance of the proposed fellowship research—not simply the title of the applicant’s doctorate—that determines whether the work fits the programme.
Who Can Apply?
The fellowship is intended for early- and mid-career researchers based in Africa.
Applicants must either hold a primary faculty appointment at a university in Africa or work at an African research organisation in a position where they conduct research at a level comparable to university faculty. Candidates must have completed their PhD before the fellowship begins on July 1, 2027.
There is also a career-stage requirement.
The earlier of the applicant’s PhD conferral date or first faculty-level appointment must fall on or after July 1, 2017. In other words, applicants whose PhD or first faculty-level appointment began on or before June 30, 2017 are generally outside the programme’s defined early- and mid-career window.
The fellowship is particularly interested in researchers who already possess strong expertise in a scientific or engineering domain and can identify a significant research challenge, but who would benefit from developing more sophisticated AI capabilities to pursue it.
That distinction matters. Applicants do not need to present themselves as finished AI experts. The programme explicitly considers a candidate’s potential to acquire strong AI skills and use them to create long-term scientific impact.
A Substantial Financial and Research Support Package
The fellowship provides considerably more than a stipend.
During the fellow’s year in residence at the University of Michigan, each participant receives an annual stipend of $35,000, together with medical insurance. The programme also provides housing and covers visa fees and travel between Africa and the University of Michigan.
Additional support is available for:
- computing equipment and software licences;
- travel to research conferences;
- training workshop fees; and
- research publication costs.
Perhaps one of the programme’s most important provisions comes after the fellow returns home. Each fellow receives a $50,000 pilot grant to implement the research, training and impact plan developed through the fellowship.
That funding transforms the return to Africa from an aspiration into an actionable part of the programme. A fellow may be able to use the experience and resources developed at Michigan to train researchers, establish new activities, continue research, develop AI-in-science programmes or seed collaborations within their institution and region.
The programme additionally provides $40,000 to the fellow’s University of Michigan faculty host to support a joint one-year research project conducted during the fellow’s period in residence.
Taken together, these provisions reveal the fellowship’s underlying philosophy: meaningful scientific capacity is built not by training an individual in isolation, but by surrounding that individual with research infrastructure, mentorship, collaboration and resources that can later produce a multiplier effect.
Training at the University of Michigan
African Faculty Fellows become part of the research environment of MIDAS while working closely with a University of Michigan faculty host.
Training opportunities may include summer academies in data science and AI, AI bootcamps, collaborative learning sessions and additional professional or technical training opportunities. Fellows also work alongside researchers within their host’s research group and the wider MIDAS community.
MIDAS itself brings together more than 750 affiliated faculty members from across the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses, spanning theoretical AI and data-science research as well as applications across a broad range of scientific disciplines.
The African Studies Center adds another dimension to the programme, supporting Africa-related academic partnerships and exchanges and helping connect the fellowship to a broader institutional ecosystem of engagement between Michigan and African scholars.
The I-TRIP: The Heart of the Application
One of the most distinctive components of the fellowship application is the Individualized Training, Research, and Impact Plan, known as the I-TRIP.
For Phase 1, applicants must submit an I-TRIP of no more than four pages, alongside their CV.
This is more than a conventional research proposal.
The document should communicate three interconnected ambitions: what the applicant wants to discover, what the applicant needs to learn, and what the applicant intends to build after returning to Africa.
The research component should present a compelling scientific vision and a credible path toward achieving it. The University of Michigan specifically encourages ideas that are creative and potentially transformative rather than requiring applicants to squeeze an exhaustive conventional grant proposal into four pages.
Applicants must also explain how they intend to strengthen AI-in-science capacity when they return home. The university gives examples ranging from establishing an AI-in-science course or organising workshops to developing regional events, creating exchange programmes and collaborating with grassroots organisations or scientific networks. Applicants are encouraged to propose initiatives that make sense for their own institution, country and region.
This element may ultimately be what separates an adequate application from an exceptional one.
A compelling candidate is therefore not simply saying:
“I want to learn artificial intelligence.”
The stronger proposition is:
“Here is an important scientific problem. Here is how AI can fundamentally improve our ability to investigate it. Here are the capabilities I need to acquire. And here is how those capabilities can continue creating value for researchers and institutions in Africa after my fellowship ends.”
That is the intellectual arc around which the application should be built.
Do Applicants Need a University of Michigan Host Before Applying?
No.
Applicants do not have to secure a University of Michigan faculty host before submitting their Phase 1 application.
However, candidates may contact eligible prospective hosts beforehand. If an applicant obtains the support of an eligible University of Michigan host, they may include an optional host letter with their Phase 1 application. According to the university’s current application instructions, an otherwise eligible Phase 1 application containing such a host-support letter will automatically proceed to Phase 2.
Applicants without a host letter are still fully eligible to apply. Their applications can be reviewed by University of Michigan faculty members interested in hosting fellows, and candidates who successfully receive host support through that process can advance to the second stage.
What Happens in Phase 2?
Candidates who advance will work with their University of Michigan host to refine their proposal.
The Phase 2 package includes an updated CV and I-TRIP, up to three keywords describing the AI methodologies to be used, a research tagline of no more than eight words, and a public-facing research summary of up to 300 words. Applicants must also submit three pieces of research-related writing that best demonstrate their accomplishments and expertise.
Additional materials include a University of Michigan host letter, a letter from the applicant’s home institution approving leave and confirming that the researcher can return to their position following the fellowship, and contact information for two to three referees who can provide recommendations.
What Will the Selection Committee Be Looking For?
The University of Michigan identifies four major areas of assessment.
First is fit with the programme: whether the applicant’s proposed research, training and impact plans align with the fellowship’s scientific scope and wider goals.
Second is candidate quality: the strength of the researcher’s previous work and their potential to become a leader in AI-enabled science and engineering.
Third is skills development: whether the fellowship can meaningfully expand the applicant’s AI capabilities and whether both fellow and host have thought carefully about the training required.
Finally, evaluators will consider potential impact—including the possibility of producing significant scientific discoveries, strengthening Africa’s AI-in-science ecosystem and building durable research collaborations between African and University of Michigan researchers.
This means applicants should resist the temptation to make their proposal impressive merely through technical complexity. The strongest application will connect technical ambition to scientific importance and scientific importance to lasting institutional impact.
Key Dates for the 2027 Fellowship
The application portal is scheduled to open on August 17, 2026.
Phase 1 deadline: October 5, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. EDT
Phase 2 deadline: November 23, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. EDT
Acceptance notifications begin: Early February 2027
Expected fellowship start: July 1, 2027, with some flexibility in special circumstances.
Successful candidates will normally have two weeks after receiving an offer to decide whether to accept it.
More Than a Fellowship
The significance of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science African Faculty Fellowship lies in what happens after a fellow learns a new technique, publishes a paper or completes a year in Ann Arbor.
Its greater promise is multiplication.
A researcher returns to an African university with deeper AI expertise. That researcher trains students. A new course emerges. A research group develops. A collaboration survives beyond the fellowship. A pilot project becomes a larger scientific programme. Researchers elsewhere in the region gain access to knowledge that previously sat thousands of kilometres away.
That is how a fellowship can become infrastructure.
The University of Michigan initiative, supported by a programme budget reported at nearly $6 million, was created to strengthen scientific innovation and faculty partnerships across African countries while expanding the use of AI in research. Its two-continent structure makes its ambition particularly clear: researchers are not being prepared simply to participate in the global AI revolution, but to help shape where that revolution leads scientific discovery in Africa.
For an eligible African faculty member with a serious scientific question, a strong record of research and a vision for multiplying the impact of what they learn, this is therefore much more than an opportunity to spend a year at one of the world’s major research universities.
It is an opportunity to connect scientific discovery, artificial intelligence and institution-building in a single fellowship—and to return home equipped not merely with new knowledge, but with the resources and partnerships to put that knowledge to work.
Applications for the 2027 cohort open August 17, 2026.