The four-year PhD programme includes in its first year intensive courses that provide a comprehensive introduction to theoretical and systems neuroscience and machine learning (see Teaching). Multidisciplinary training in other areas of neuroscience is also available. We offer a supportive and interdisciplinary environment with close links to the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviours (SWC) and the ELLIS Unit at UCL. Students are strongly encouraged to work and interact closely with peers and faculty at SWC and the ELLIS Unit to benefit from this uniquely multidisciplinary research environment. Projects involving collaboration with researchers at and/or external to UCL are welcome. For details see programme structure.

The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent systems is a pan-European effort initiated in 2018 to foster European research excellence in machine learning and related fields. It aims to offer European researchers outstanding opportunities to carry out their research in Europe, and to nurture the next generation of European young researchers in this field of strategic importance. Its goal is to enable Europe to be competitive in modern AI and benefit from positive economic and societal impact. Today, ELLIS announces the establishment of the first 17 ELLIS units across 10 European countries and Israel. Built around outstanding AI researchers, the newly established research units are devoted to tackling fundamental challenges in AI with a focus on research excellence and societal impact.

ELLIS is a not-for-profit organization whose goal is to establish a network of European research labs on Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems. ELLIS' aspiration is to become the leading open science AI organization in the world. The ELLIS sites are key towards reaching this goal as they will provide unprecedented flexibility and financial support to a selected group of researchers in machine learning - and related fields - to spark economic and societal innovation. The long-term vision is to build a joint European laboratory similar to the European Molecular Biology Lab (EMBL) as described in the original open letter (https://ellis.eu/letter). ELLIS sites are a key element towards achieving this goal as they will implement as much of the ELLIS vision as possible.