Stanford Robotics Center Robotics Scholars Program

About the Stanford Robotics Center Robotics Scholars Program:

The SRC Robotics Scholars Program supports Stanford PhD students enrolled in the School of Engineering who are pursuing cutting-edge robotics research with multiple faculty mentors. The fellowship offers students the opportunity to maximize the impact and expand the scope of their work by receiving full support (stipend and tuition) for two years (with the possibility to extend to a third year), using SRC space and infrastructure, and receiving interdisciplinary mentorship and guidance from SRC faculty and staff. We expect the program to support 4-8 new scholars each year.


Robotics Application Areas:

SRC Robotics Scholars’ research must use SRC facilities and be focused on a robotics project relevant to one of the following application areas:

  • Medical: Topics of interest include remote (clinician-in-the-loop), augmented, and autonomous medical interventions, e.g., robot-assisted surgery

  • Domestic: Robots for cognitive and physical assistance for older adults in the home

  • Manufacturing and Logistics: Robotics for low-volume, high-mix assembly to drive skills in dextrous manipulation

  • Field and Marine: Our focus this year is on manipulation in outdoor or extreme environments

  • Arts, Culture, and Education: We welcome creative ideas in the areas of arts, culture, and education, which would result in long-term collaborative projects among multiple SRC faculty

Eligibility:

  • Students must be 2nd- or 3rd-year PhD students enrolled in the School of Engineering at Stanford University at the time of application.

  • The student must be nominated by their PhD advisor for a co-advised project involving two academic council faculty (ideally from different departments), who are SRC faculty affiliates.

  • Each SRC-affiliated faculty member can nominate at most two students per nomination cycle, and there is no limit to the number of nominations on which a faculty member can be a co-advisor.

  • The scholar must be able to utilize the fellowship beginning in the summer or fall quarter after the award is offered, and should be enrolled at Stanford full-time for the duration of the fellowship.

  • Students on full fellowships such as the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, Bio-X, or Knight-Hennessey Fellowship are not eligible for the SRC Scholars Program. Students on partial fellowships that require supplementation, like the NSF GRFP, may apply.

Nominate:

Nominations for the 2026 SRC Robotics Scholars fellowship are now open.

The nomination deadline is March 20, 2026, at 5:00 pm PST.

Decisions will be made by April 20, and the fellowship can begin in Summer 2026 or Autumn 2026.

The nomination is to be submitted via the 2026 SRC Robotics Scholars nomination form and requires the following materials:

  • Information about the nominee’s Ph.D. advisor, project co-advisor, and nominee

  • Nominee CV in PDF format

  • 2-page PDF description of the proposed project, including background and motivation, research plan, relevance to a specific application area (see above), brief description of the expertise and contributions of the nominee’s Ph.D. advisor and project co-advisor, and how the project will use SRC facilities. Figures are included in the two-page limit, links to videos are allowed, and references can be on additional pages.

  • 1-page PDF letter of support from the nominee’s Ph.D. advisor, explaining the student’s suitability for the project and the advisor’s expected contribution to the project

  • 1-page PDF letter of support from the project co-advisor, explaining the student’s suitability for the project and the advisor’s expected contribution to the project


Questions:

If you have questions about this fellowship, please contact Eiko Rutherford <erutherford@stanford.edu>.