PHD POSITION

PhD Studentship: Sovereign Agentic AI: Distilling Small Language Model Agents for Local…

Deadline: 8 Dec 2026 · 26 days left

Institution: University of Exeter
Country: United Kingdom
Field: Computer science and AI
Type: PhD position
Pay: £21,805 The studentship will provide funding of fees and a stipend of £21,805 per annum for 2026/7.
Deadline: 8 Dec 2026 · 26 days left

About this position

Agentic AI systems are language models that plan, call software tools, and complete multi-step tasks with little human input. They are moving from demonstrations into business operations such as customer support, procurement, invoice processing, and compliance checking. Most of these agents run on large models hosted by a few overseas cloud providers. For many UK businesses, this is a fragile position. Operational data leaves the organisation, cost grows with every request, and the capability depends on a supplier that the business does not control. The UK’s Sovereign AI programme, launched in

Who can apply

Nationality and visa rules

PhD Atlas has not checked the nationality or visa rules for this call yet. Read the official page before you apply.

We only state a rule when we have read it on the official page. Any note appears here once it is checked.

Deadlines and how to apply

Applications close on 8 Dec 2026 (26 days from today). Apply on the official page; PhD Atlas does not collect applications.

Read the official call and apply

Official call: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTK885/phd-studentship-sovereign-agentic-ai-distilling-small-language-model-agents-for-local-deployment

Always read the official call and the nationality rules before you apply.