CYD Fellowships

To promote research and education in cyber-defence, the EPFL and the Cyber-Defence (CYD) Campus have jointly launched the “CYD Fellowships – A Talent Program for Cyber-Defence Research.”

A rolling call for Master Thesis Fellowship applications is open, and the twelfth call for applications will open on 4 June 2025 with a deadline of 20 August 2025 (17:00 CEST) for Doctoral and Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship applications. In addition, a CYD Proof of Concept Fellowship program is also now available via an open rolling call.

@CYD Campus

A Talent Program for Cyber-Defence Research

Cyber-threats have been accelerating due to the exponential growth of network connectivity. These new capabilities provide myriad opportunities for security hackers to wreak significant damage for commercial, political, or other gains.

CYD Fellowships are designed to promote new solutions to major challenges in the fields of security and data science by bringing together basic and applied research in cyber-defence.

The CYD Fellowships is a talent program for cyber-defence research.  It offers Master Thesis, Doctoral, and Distinguished Postdoctoral fellowships to candidates with an outstanding academic and, if applicable, professional track record. This program is highly competitive, and the primary evaluation criterion is excellence, as measured by academic records and professional accomplishments. Candidates applying for a CYD fellowship are expected to have excellent grade transcripts.

The Master Thesis fellowships are on a rolling-call basis so Master students may apply any time. There are two calls per year for Doctoral and Distinguished Postdoctoral fellowships. The 12th call will open on 4 June 2025. The deadline for applications is 20 August 2025 (17:00 CEST). Both new applications and resubmissions are encouraged.

CYD fellows are hosted by a higher education institution in Switzerland and conduct their research at the CYD Campus located on the premises of EPFL and ETHZ and in its office in Thun. The CYD Campus is a cyber-competence center acting as an anticipation platform for identifying and assessing technologies, commercial and social cyber trends, as well as the resulting usage scenarios.

CYD Master Thesis Fellowships

Living allowance and research funds for 6 months

More details here

CYD Doctoral Fellowships

Salary, research and conference funds for 4 years (with a possible one-year extension)

More details here

CYD Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships

Salary, research and conference funds for up to 2 years

More details here

Application deadline

A rolling call for Master Thesis Fellowship applications is open. Applications may be submitted throughout the year.

The 12th call will open on 4 June 2025 and applicants for the Doctoral and Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowships may apply until 20 August 2025 (17:00 CEST).

Application toolkit

Please, read carefully all documents available in the application toolkit to prepare your application.

The toolkit for Master Thesis Fellowship applications is available here.

The toolkit for Doctoral and Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship applications (11th call) is available here.

Submission platform

Access the application platform here.

The CYD Fellowships are supported by armasuisse Science and Technology

Contact

EPFL Research Office

Av. Auguste-Piccard 1

CH – 1015 Lausanne

research@epfl.ch


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