The Google DeepMind scholarship pays for one stream of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) South Africa’s Master’s in Mathematical Sciences: the AI for Science programme at the AIMS campus in Muizenberg, Cape Town. It is a fully residential, one-year taught master’s with a research component, aimed at graduates from across Africa who want to use machine learning on scientific problems.
AIMS has not opened a call for a 2027-28 cohort. Its most recent call, for the cohort that started in September 2026, opened on 8 December 2025 and closed at 11:59 PM SAST on 6 March 2026.
Why the next intake is uncertain
AIMS states on its AI for Science site that a Google DeepMind donation funds 40 scholars a year for the four years starting in September 2023. AIMS calls the September 2026 class the programme’s fourth edition, which makes it the last intake that the original donation covers. Neither AIMS nor Google DeepMind had announced an extension or a fifth intake when we checked on 1 October 2026. Watch the AIMS AI for Science website for news; the last call went up in early December.
What a Google DeepMind scholar receives
AIMS describes the scholarship as covering everything a student needs for the year:
- return flights to South Africa
- tuition, accommodation and living expenses
- medical insurance
- equipment and the computing costs of running AI experiments and research
- chances to connect with Google DeepMind researchers and engineers for mentoring
Teaching starts with foundational courses and moves to courses where AI meets the applied sciences, with an initial focus on cosmology, epidemiology and ecology. AIMS draws on nearby partners such as the Square Kilometre Array Observatory, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation and SACEMA.
Degree, citizenship and residence rules
For the 2026-27 cohort, applicants had to:
- be a citizen of an African country and live in Africa when applying (AIMS waives the residence rule for people displaced by war);
- hold a four-year undergraduate degree, or a three-year degree plus an Honours year, in physics, mathematics, statistics, computer science, engineering or another strongly mathematical and computational field;
- never have held a scholarship at any AIMS centre.
The four-year degree rule exists because South Africa requires it for an accredited master’s. AIMS also let students still in their final year apply with the transcripts they had, and southern African applicants on a January-to-December year could finish by December.
A coding problem instead of reference letters
Selection ran in two rounds. In the online round, applicants registered on the AIMS application portal and uploaded a CV, a motivation letter of about 500 words, academic transcripts, examples of their own work in the mathematical sciences, and an answer to a coding problem set on the portal. AIMS deliberately does not ask for recommendation letters, saying they favour applicants who know experienced letter writers. Shortlisted applicants then had short online interviews in May.
AIMS stresses that the questions are not an exam but show how you approach problems, and that a full application cannot be done at the last minute.
A January start for South African students
The programme follows a September-to-August year. South African graduates whose degrees end in December could, where AIMS judged them ready, defer their start to January and join a smaller January intake for South African students, taking the foundational block after the dissertation. There is still only one application window, so a January starter applies in the same call as everyone else.
Admission questions go to ai-admissions@aims.ac.za. If you need a funded master’s in a related field, look at the SARB scholarship for a data science master’s, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust scholarships for master’s and PhD study, and our postgraduate bursaries hub.