Insight Scholarship Programme

 

The Insight Scholarship programme, supported by funding from Google,  is the largest scholarship programme of its kind in Ireland. With a funding package of €1.5 million, more than 60 undergraduate students will receive scholarship support between 2024–2029. The scholarship will support third level students, entering their first year of university, from underrepresented and socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds and communities, with a particular focus placed on students studying courses related to artificial intelligence (AI) and digital safety.

The fields of AI and digital safety are rapidly evolving and there is a growing need for scholarships to support students from underserved and socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds and communities. The programme aims to assist underrepresented students, entering first year, to complete their undergraduate degree, through scholarship funding and wrap-around support.

Insight’s education and public engagement vision is ‘empowering critically aware, creative communities towards a better society for all’ and our mission is to ‘co-develop solutions to the most pressing problems on our planet, integrating expertise across disciplines, sectors, and critically, including citizens as partners’. Together with Google, we strongly believe that Insight’s vision and mission can only be achieved if we lead the charge to tackle societal inequalities in STEM education.

Insight and Google are committed to fostering diversity and inclusion in AI and Digital Safety. We recognise that these fields have implications for various domains of education and work, and we want to ensure that students from under-represented communities in STEM have equal opportunities to access our scholarship funding. This scholarship will ultimately create a more diverse and representative pool of researchers and practitioners who can contribute to the future of AI and Digital Safety innovation.

The Participant Information Sheet for the project is available here.

The Data Privacy Notice for the project is available here.

Eligibility

To qualify for the scholarship programme applicants must be entering their first year of university and be registered with either their University Access Office or their University Disability Office. Applicants will need to fall under one or more of the following minority categories, including but not limited to:​

We recognise intersectional layers of disadvantage and that people can belong to more than one underrepresented group. Preference will be made to applicants who have multiple indicators of educational disadvantage. To read more about these indicators refer to the National Access Plan.

Successful applicants will be awarded €5,000 per year, up to a maximum duration of 5 years. Students must be registered with their local University Access Office, and also registered to one of the eligible courses in order to apply. There are 230 eligible courses across 13 universities. Contact your Access Office for a full list.

 

Application Process and Timeline

  • Each eligible student can apply through an online application, which will be available at the beginning of the academic year.
  • A committee will rank each application based on the applicant’s indicators of disadvantage. Applications with intersectional layers of disadvantage will be prioritised e.g., a HEAR student registered to the disability services will receive a higher ranking than a HEAR student who does not fall within another under-represented category.
  • Successful applicants will be notified and awarded €5,000 per year for the duration of their studies in two seperate payments each year
  • Scholars entering the programme must finish their studies by 2029, therefore the list of applicable courses will be subject to change each year depending on course duration

APPLY HERE

Applications are open from 1st October 2025 and close on the 25th of October 2025. Please note if you are successful in your application you will be invited to attend a launch event for the scholarship programme in Google head office in February 2026.

Additional Support Offered

In addition to the €5,000 offered to students per year, each successful applicant must take part in a mentorship programme that will be run through Insight. Each student will be provided with mentorship support from senior Insight academics and industry leaders.

Students will partake in an Insight and Google hosted event at least once per year. During these events, students will visit Google’s head office in Dublin and hear from academics and industry leaders with experience in AI, Digital Safety and STEM. Students will also have a chance to network with other Google Insight Scholarship recipients during these events.

Students will be provided with a list of further useful support services at each local university, which will be accessible through their local access offices.

 

Insight Overview:

The Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics, funded by Research Ireland, is one of the largest data analytics centres in Europe. It brings together over 450 researchers across areas such as the Fundamentals of Data Science, Sensing and Actuation, Scaling Algorithms, Model Building, Multi Modal Analysis, Data Engineering and Governance, Decision Making and Trustworthy AI. Insight’s researchers are based across our four host institutions: Dublin City University, University of Galway, University College Cork and University College Dublin as well as our partner sites Maynooth University, Tyndall National Institute, Trinity College Dublin and University of Limerick. Further partnerships have been put in place with the other Irish universities mentioned above for the purpose of this scholarship programme. During its decade of existence, the centre has attracted over €150 million in funding and has established over 220 industry collaborations.

More about Insight’s research ecosystem.

A full list of Insight’s world-class investigators with details on their areas of expertise.

For queries and more information on the scholarship programme, please email: Megan.griffin@insight-centre.orgMegan Griffin

 

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