The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has announced the Spärck AI Scholarships, a new initiative to support the next generation of AI leaders. Cambridge University is a founding partner of this program.
These scholarships are designed for high-potential domestic and international students pursuing AI-related Master's degrees. The package includes full tuition fees, a living stipend, and priority work placements with leading UK artificial intelligence companies and government institutions.
The program will start in the 2026–27 academic year, aiming to enroll 100 scholars over four years. Candidates will be selected from the top 1% of global AI talent, requiring academic excellence, leadership potential, and a STEM background.
A unique feature of the Spärck AI Scholarships is providing students with priority access to work placements within UK-based AI organizations, including the UK government's AI Security Institute (AISI) and i.AI, their in-house AI incubator.
The scholarships honor Professor Karen Spärck Jones (1935–2007), a British computer scientist whose work at Cambridge laid the foundations for modern search engines and natural language processing. Her seminal paper in 1972 introduced inverse document frequency, crucial to information retrieval today.
Professor Deborah Prentice, University of Cambridge Vice-Chancellor, stated: “Cambridge combines academic excellence with a dynamic, interdisciplinary AI community, from foundational research to real-world impact. We are delighted to be a founding partner in this ambitious initiative... We are especially proud that these scholarships are named after Karen Spärck Jones."
Professor Spärck Jones had a long association with Cambridge. She was an undergraduate at Girton College (1953-1956), held fellowships at Newnham College and Darwin College, and was a Fellow of Wolfson College until 2007. Her career began at the Cambridge Language Research Unit in the late 1950s. She taught courses on language systems and information retrieval and supervised many PhD students.
Her influence was recognized internationally through awards like the ACM SIGIR Salton Award and BCS Lovelace Medal. She was elected as a Fellow of both the British Academy and the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.
The University of Cambridge co-founded this program as part of its commitment to honoring her legacy.
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