NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF)

Here at Imperial, we have a strong track record of supporting our Academic Clinical Fellows (ACFs) to progress to the next stage of clinical academic training. Many former ACFs have successfully secured competitive research fellowships, including NIHR Doctoral Research Fellowships and externally funded PhD opportunities, enabling them to continue developing their clinical academic careers. For more information, please see NIHR Integrated Academic Training and NIHR IAT Guide.

Recruitment to the 2027 NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowships (ACF’s) will open from October 2026.

Please see a timeline for recruitment activity below:

_{Key recruitment dates for specialty recruitment: https://medical.hee.nhs.uk/medical-training-recruitment/medical-speciality-training/overview-of-speciality-training/recruitment-timelines}

• All posts are advertised via Oriel
• London NHS England is responsible for the application and interview process.
• For enquiries about the application process you can contact London NHS England directly via the Support Portal

• See the table below for a list of the 2027 UCL ACFs

Funding and bursaries

There are currently three sources of funding available to Imperial NIHR academic clinical fellows to support their research. Each fund has a distinct purpose, eligibility criteria and application process - and all three are coordinated through the CATO Team. Academic trainees are advised to consider their academic training, research consumables and skills development needs early on in their programmes in order to achieve maximum benefit from the funding available. See our funding webpage for further information. 

The three funding sources for ACFs are listed below: 

• National Institute of Health Research Bursary for Academic Trainees
• Imperial Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) funding
• Research Training Programme Award (RTPA)

Events