DAFNI Fellowship 2026–2027: Applications Closed (Historical Reference)

DAFNI Fellowship 2026–2027: Applications Closed (Historical Reference)

The DAFNI Fellowship 2026 application round is closed. This page is a historical reference for the fellowship programme that ran from April 2026 to June 2027, rather than a live invitation to apply. The official UKRI opportunity page records the closing deadline as 4 February 2026 at 5:00pm UK time and says that applications could not be submitted after that time. DAFNI’s current fellowship page says that applications for its 2026 Fellows have closed and that information about future applications will be posted there; it does not announce a new deadline. No later cycle is stated here because no official date has been published.

The opportunity was run through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with the Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI) as co-funder. DAFNI describes itself as a programme supporting infrastructure research through data, analytical models, visualisations, and collaboration. The fellowship was designed to make researchers active contributors to that community: fellows would promote their research, connect people across government, academia, and industry, and help shape DAFNI’s future direction.

Verified details for the closed round

The individual amount is important. This was not a £100,000 award paid to every fellow. UKRI listed a £100,000 total fund, while DAFNI’s programme page specifies 10 fellowships at £10,000 per Fellow, with the funding set at 100% FEC. DAFNI says the support was intended particularly for research dissemination and networking, and that it could be used for staff time and travel. Applicants should therefore read the amount as a small, focused fellowship allocation attached to a wider ambassador role.

What the fellowship was intended to do

Each fellow became an ambassador for DAFNI. The role joined a researcher’s own work to the needs of a national infrastructure research community. The official UKRI description identifies sustainable research, promotion of the fellow’s research, networks across government, industry, and academia, and input into the DAFNI Roadmap as central parts of the programme.

The fellowship was also practical. UKRI asked fellows to showcase their expertise by leading or contributing to white papers and reports for the Centre of Excellence. Fellows were expected to bring research onto the DAFNI Platform in collaboration with the DAFNI team. The platform contains datasets and models in catalogue collections, and the programme wanted fellows to help add reliable, reusable research outputs to that body of knowledge.

Community engagement was another defined responsibility. UKRI described outreach and engagement with stakeholders, including workshops led with the DAFNI team around important UK infrastructure challenges. The funding supported travel for dissemination and promotion of DAFNI. Fellows were also involved in the DAFNI Conference, where their expertise would help keep the event driven by domain knowledge while giving them opportunities to build skills and relationships within the community.

The cohort itself mattered. Fellows were expected to share expertise and guidance with one another, foster collaboration, build networks, and help steer DAFNI’s development. The DAFNI page reports that the programme launched in May 2026 and welcomed its first cohort of ten DAFNI Fellows. That later programme update confirms the intended cohort size and shows that the 2026 round moved from application into delivery; it does not create a new application window.

Eligibility and fit

The closed call was open to all researchers and to all organisations with standard UKRI eligibility. The basic host condition was that an applicant be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. UKRI said that eligibility would be determined at panel review under UKRI rules. A prospective applicant in the completed round would have needed to confirm the status of their organisation through its research office or the UKRI eligibility guidance before submitting.

The programme welcomed applicants at all career stages. Publication history was requested as part of the application, but UKRI explicitly said that it was one part of the application and not a requirement for selection. This corrects any impression that the fellowship was restricted to early-career researchers or that a particular publication record was mandatory.

Fit was broader than a single technical discipline. The five programme goals were equally weighted: fostering collaboration; bridging the gap between government, academia, and industry; DAFNI innovation; growing knowledge within the Centre of Excellence; and sustainable research. A strong candidate would have been able to connect their research to at least one meaningful infrastructure question while also explaining how they would share knowledge, work with stakeholders, or improve the accessibility and reuse of research outputs.

The sustainable-research goal was specific in its emphasis on durable outputs. DAFNI wanted data, analytical models, and data visualisations to be available through its platform as reliable, reproducible, accessible, and reusable contributions. The call therefore suited researchers who could explain not only what they study, but also how their outputs could be documented, shared, discussed, and used by people outside their immediate research group.

The five assessment goals

The assessment was not presented as a competition based only on prestige or publication count. UKRI states that the applications were equally weighted across five goals, with each receiving 20% of the assessment.

Fostering collaboration concerned DAFNI’s mission to bring researchers together and support modelling frameworks across the UK. An applicant could address this by showing how their work would connect people, methods, datasets, or infrastructure domains that are usually treated separately.

Bridging government, academia, and industry focused on evidence-based interactions with the stakeholders who plan, operate, regulate, or depend on infrastructure. The relevant question was how the fellow would make those relationships useful, rather than simply listing organisations they hoped to meet.

DAFNI innovation covered cross-disciplinary research in infrastructure engineering and the development of platform capabilities that help research outputs be used well. Applicants needed a credible link between their expertise and the kinds of data, models, or platform improvements DAFNI supports.

Growing knowledge within the Centre of Excellence connected the fellowship to DAFNI’s strategy around a secure and resilient world. UKRI describes this as strengthening security and resilience from individual to national level across social and economic areas involved in national infrastructure systems.

Sustainable research concerned long-term accessibility and reuse. The programme wanted research outputs to remain available as part of an enduring information resource, not to disappear after a presentation or a single project.

How the 2026 application worked

The official route was an expression of interest form. The form asked for personal and demographic information, the applicant’s research domain, field or area of work, publication history, and an explanation of how the applicant would address the DAFNI Fellowship Programme goals. Personal and demographic information was collected to help monitor and improve equality, diversity, and inclusion within the programme.

This was not described as a conventional long-form grant proposal with a fixed technical case for support. The published instructions centred on the applicant’s background, research area, and response to the programme goals. The right way to approach the completed round would have been to make the connection between the applicant’s work and DAFNI clear, then give concrete evidence of how the applicant could contribute to dissemination, platform knowledge, stakeholder engagement, collaboration, or the Roadmap.

The official page also gave a named contact route. Questions went to the DAFNI Programme Team at [email protected], with “DAFNI Fellowship” in the subject line. UKRI said the team aimed to respond within two working days. That contact is retained for historical context and for questions about the programme, not as evidence that applications remain open.

Timeline of the completed call

The UKRI page records the opportunity’s publication date as 16 January 2026. Applications opened on 19 December 2025 at 10:00am UK time and closed on 4 February 2026 at 5:00pm UK time. A webinar for questions was scheduled for 21 January 2026 at 12:00pm. The official timeline placed funding awards in March 2026, with the fellowship starting on 1 April 2026. An in-person kick-off meeting was listed for April or May 2026, to be confirmed.

The funding itself was to run from April 2026 to June 2027. These dates describe the completed 2026 round. They should not be copied into a future application as if DAFNI had announced a repeat call, and the February deadline should not be replaced with “rolling”: the official process had a fixed closing date and UKRI explicitly stated that applications could not be submitted after it.

What readers should do now

There is no verified current application step for this page. The UKRI opportunity is marked Closed, and DAFNI’s current programme page says that applications for the 2026 Fellows have closed. That page says that further information about future applications will be posted there, but it does not provide a future date. Anyone seeking a later round should check the DAFNI programme page and UKRI’s funding finder for a new announcement.

The closed page is still useful for preparing for a possible successor. A researcher can study the five equally weighted goals, identify research outputs that could be shared through the DAFNI Platform, and think through practical ways to contribute to workshops, white papers, reports, conference activity, and the DAFNI Roadmap. A host organisation can also check its UKRI eligibility and consider how staff time and travel would be budgeted if a later call uses a similar structure. None of those preparations constitutes an application to the closed round.

In short, the DAFNI Fellowship was a focused £10,000-per-fellow programme for researchers who could combine infrastructure-relevant research with communication, collaboration, and durable sharing of outputs. The 2026 opportunity has ended. Keep 4 February 2026 as the real historical deadline, use this page as an archive of the published terms, and wait for DAFNI or UKRI to announce a new cycle before treating the programme as open again.