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Fully Funded Doctoral Studentship in Theoretical Computer Science
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Student fee status: Home
Supervisor: Sandra Kiefer
Start Date: October 2026
Application: centrally via University of Oxford
Deadline: 2 December 2025
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The Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford is offering one fully funded DPhil studentship at home-fee level in the Algorithms & Complexity Theory theme under the supervision of Sandra Kiefer, to commence next academic year (October 2026).
The successful applicant will join the Algorithms & Complexity Theory team: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/research/algorithms.
This internationally-leading research group studies the difficulty of computational problems. Methods involve classifying problems and objects according to their inherent complexity, as well as designing and analysing algorithms with respect to their efficiency and computational limits. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to collaborate with other members of the team and of the department.
Sandra Kiefer’s interests are in graph theory, logic, and descriptive complexity theory, with applications in algorithms, graph machine learning, and verification. She has further projects in automata theory and at the intersection of machine learning and biomedicine: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/sandra.kiefer.
The studentship will provide an annual stipend (at the UKRI rate) of at least £20,780 per annum for 3.5 years (42 months). The studentship will also cover the costs of course tuition fees at home level. Research students in the Department of Computer Science are also provided with a fund for travel to conferences and workshops (subject to approval).
Applicants must satisfy the usual requirements for studying for a doctorate at Oxford, and apply online by Tuesday, 2 December 2025, via the DPhil in Computer Science, quoting studentship reference 25-CS-SK: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/dphil-computer-science.
Candidates are expected to have a strong computational and/or mathematical background, with undergraduate studies in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Mathematics or related disciplines. Candidates must also have good writing, communication and presentation skills (see the University's web pages on the DPhil in Computer Science for details).
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For further information or for informal discussions about suitability, please contact Sandra Kiefer.
For further information about the studentship or the application process, please e-mail Computer Science Graduate Admissions <graduate.admissions@cs.ox.ac.uk>.