Apple Scholars in AIML PhD Fellowship Program 2026–2027

The Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD Fellowship is a program designed to support PhD students conducting advanced research in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Unlike government-funded scholarships, the Apple Scholars program is invitation-only. Each year, Apple invites a select group of universities to nominate up to three of their most promising PhD students. The fellowship covers full tuition and fees, provides a living stipend and travel support, and connects each Scholar with an Apple researcher for mentorship and possible internship opportunities. There is no direct application portal. Students must be nominated by their university, and each institution sets its own internal deadline. In general, internal deadlines fall in July, universities submit nominations in late August or early September, and results are announced around December.

Program Details

• Application period: There is no global application window. Students must meet their department’s internal deadline, often in July, after which the university nominates its selected candidates to Apple between late August and mid-September. Apple typically announces decisions in December or January, with funding beginning in the following academic year.
• Eligible study level: The fellowship is for PhD students only. Nominees must be enrolled full-time at the nominating university at the start of the award year and are generally in the final two or three years of their doctoral studies.
• Partner universities: Apple invites a limited number of universities in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Institutions that have been associated with the program include University of Toronto, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, University of Washington, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, Boston University, Johns Hopkins University, Technical University of Munich and the University of Cambridge. The participating list may vary each year and is not publicly released in full.
• Results: Universities and nominees generally receive decisions in December or January following the nomination period.
• Scholarship duration: The fellowship usually covers two academic years. It may also include mentorship and possible internship opportunities during the fellowship period.

Apple Scholars Fellowship Amount and Benefits

The Apple Scholars fellowship provides a package intended to support doctoral research:

1. Full tuition and fees for two academic years.
2. Living stipend: a USD 40,000 gift per year to support living expenses.
3. Travel grant: an annual USD 5,000 grant for research-related travel and conference participation.
4. Mentorship with an Apple researcher, offering research guidance and industry perspective.
5. Possible internship opportunities during the fellowship period, depending on the Scholar’s status and Apple’s requirements.

Note: The fellowship is provided to the nominating university as an unrestricted gift. There is no employer-employee relationship between Apple and the Scholar. Universities distribute the funds to students, and the award depends on full-time enrollment and satisfactory academic progress.

Duration of the Apple Scholars Fellowship

The Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD Fellowship provides funding for two academic years. Scholars remain enrolled at their home university and may continue receiving institutional support beyond the fellowship period. Internship opportunities, when available, may take place during one or both summers of the fellowship.

Eligible Universities and Programs

The program is open only to PhD students from invited universities. Each institution may nominate up to three students, and each nominee must represent a distinct research area. Research areas of interest to Apple include:

1. Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning – federated learning, differential privacy, cryptographic tools and secure multiparty computation.
2. Human-Centered AI – multimodal interaction, human factors, usable machine learning tools, interactive ML, model personalization and human-in-the-loop methods.
3. AI for Ethics and Fairness – bias mitigation, interpretability, robustness and transparency.
4. AI for Accessibility – inclusive technologies and assistive interfaces for people with disabilities.
5. AI for Health and Wellness – machine learning for healthcare, mobile health and sensor data analysis.
6. ML Theory – foundational questions in machine learning, including generalization and generative models.
7. ML Algorithms and Architectures – algorithm design, model compression, optimization, large-scale models and diffusion models.
8. Interactive ML and Agents – systems and agents that learn through interaction with the physical world.
9. Speech and Natural Language, Computer Vision, Information Retrieval and Knowledge and Data-Centric AI, among others.

Eligibility Requirements for the Apple Scholars Fellowship

To be nominated, candidates generally need to meet several conditions:

• Be a full-time PhD student at an invited university and expect to remain enrolled through the fellowship period.
• Be in the last two or three years of the doctoral program.
• Not hold another industry-sponsored full fellowship during the Apple Scholars award period.
• Be nominated by the university. Each institution may submit up to three nominees, each in a different research area.
• Apple encourages universities to consider students from underrepresented groups in the technology sector.

How to Apply for the Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD Fellowship

Because the Apple Scholars program does not accept direct applications, prospective candidates must follow their university’s internal nomination process:

1. Express interest to your graduate unit. Contact your department chair, graduate coordinator or awards office to confirm whether your university has been invited and to learn about internal selection procedures.
2. Prepare your nomination materials. Typical requirements may include a CV, a 200-word research abstract, a 4-5 page research statement describing past work and future plans, and two letters of recommendation. Since internal deadlines often fall in July, it is advisable to begin preparing early.
3. Participate in internal selection. Departments review applications and may forward selected candidates to a university-level competition. Universities then submit their final nominees to Apple during the nomination period.
4. Await notification. Apple typically announces fellowship recipients in December or January, with funding beginning in the following fall term.

Deadline Examples

Because there is no single global deadline, internal dates vary by institution. The following examples illustrate the timeline and show why students should check with their university early:

• University of Toronto (OISE/CTL): July 14, 2026.
• Purdue University: July 25, 2025 for nomination materials.
• Boston University: July 27, 2025 for internal materials and September 9, 2025 for nominations.
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: August 15, 2025.
• Technical University of Munich: August 1, 2025.

These examples show that universities often require materials well before Apple’s nomination window. Students interested in the fellowship should contact their graduate office early and begin preparing documents in advance.

Contact

For questions about the Apple Scholars in AI/ML PhD Fellowship, students should contact their university’s graduate awards office, doctoral school or research office. Additional details may also appear on Apple’s machine learning research pages and in university nomination announcements. The specific nomination guidelines used by each institution remain the most important reference for deadlines and required documents.

Apple Machine Learning Research U of T Award Page Nomination Guidelines (PDF)