The ELLIS PhD Program has wrapped up another record-breaking recruitment cycle, and the numbers tell a clear story for the European Lighthouse of AI for Sustainability (ELIAS): interest in interdisciplinary, sustainability-oriented, and trustworthy AI research keeps growing. As one of the program's core network partners, ELIAS continues to shape the next generation of AI researchers tackling the field's hardest open problems — from interpretability and fairness to climate science and bioinformatics.

The 2025/2026 intake drew close to 4,500 registered applicants and 2,111 completed applications, a 41% and 43% increase respectively over the previous cycle. Within that surge, ELIAS's footprint within the programme also continued to grow: the network now counts 62 advisors across 19 partner institutions actively recruiting through the call, and nearly half of all applicants expressed interest in esearch areas closely aligned with ELIAS priorities.

Sustainability and Trustworthy AI Keep Gaining Ground

Among the roughly 2,111 students who applied this year, ELIAS-specific fields — spanning interpretability and fairness, robustness and trustworthiness, climate and earth sciences, social sciences and humanities, and law and ethics — accounted for a substantial share of stated research interests. Robust and trustworthy machine learning alone drew interest from 24% of applicants, placing it among the program's most popular topics overall, on par with established pillars like natural language processing.

Among the newly admitted cohort, this pattern holds and, in several fields, intensifies. Representation of ML in Chemistry & Material Sciences increased from 4% among applicants to 14% among admitted students, while Robust & Trustworthy ML and Interpretability & Fairness remained firmly among the most cited research directions.

"The strong interest in trustworthy and sustainable AI demonstrates that young researchers increasingly want to work on challenges that combine scientific excellence with societal impact," said Florence d'Alché-Buc, ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program Coordinator at Institut Polytechnique de Paris. "These results reinforce the importance of building interdisciplinary research environments where AI can contribute to sustainability, science, and public benefit."

A Growing Network Behind the Numbers

This year's call mobilised 62 ELIAS advisors, drawn from a pool of 19 ELIAS partner institutions, who joined the ELLIS Network's broader recruitment effort spanning 321 advisors across 21 countries and roughly 200 European research institutions. Their work fed into a highly competitive, 415-evaluator selection process that ultimately admitted 121 PhD students out of 2,111 applicants from 38 nationalities and 27 countries.

ELIAS's role sits within this larger structure as a driver of the program's interdisciplinary ambitions. Each ELLIS PhD student is co-supervised by two advisors based in different European countries and completes a minimum six-month research exchange with their secondary advisor, a model that pairs naturally with ELIAS's own emphasis on connecting machine learning with disciplines such as chemistry, earth sciences, law, and the humanities.

Looking Ahead

With this latest cohort, the ELLIS PhD Programme now counts approximately 500 students across its Academic (83%), Industry (13%), and Interdisciplinary (4%) tracks. The growing pipeline positions Europe at the forefront of AI innovation built around economic and environmental stability. The next global call for applications for the ELLIS PhD Programme is expected to open in October 2026. More details regarding the ELLIS PhD Program and upcoming calls for entry are available via the official portal at ellis.eu/phd-postdoc.

This growing pipeline of researchers reflects the strength of the ELIAS network's partner institutions across Europe, all working together to establish Europe as a leader in AI that drives sustainable innovation and economic development.

ELIAS will also support the upcoming edition of the European Doctoral Symposium (EDS 2026), dedicated to Trustworthy AI, further strengthening opportunities for doctoral researchers to engage with Europe's AI research community. More information can be found here: EDS 2026 - Trustworthy AI or the official EDS 2026 portal.