ICIQ Summer Fellowship Programme Call 2026

ICIQ Summer Fellowship Programme offers up to 9 fellowships to national and international undergraduate students to give them the opportunity to learn, work and live in an exciting environment of cutting-edge research in chemistry. Students are welcome to spend up to a 3-month paid internship in one of ICIQ’s research groups between the months of June, July, August and September.

These fellowships will be financed by The Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ). The undergraduates, mentored and supervised by a PhD student or a postdoctoral researcher, will carry out research projects with scientists at the forefront of their fields in addition to receiving training. During their stay, students will have access to ICIQ seminars and conferences. By the end of their internship, Summer Fellows will be required to present a short report and presentation of the work and results obtained.

This is a great opportunity for undergraduates to have an insight on the Institute research activities and to conduct research in an international scientific environment. Moreover, Summer Fellows are in an optimal situation to carry out Master studies at ICIQ and then apply for a future PhD position in our institute.

The Summer Fellowship Programme 2026 will be supported by the ICIQ Severo Ochoa CEX2024-001469-S grant funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.

Deadline for applications: March 22nd, 2026

Contact: summerfellowships@iciq.es

I. Requirements

• The ICIQ Summer Fellowships programme is addressed to undergraduate students with a background in Chemistry, Physics, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering or related disciplines or other related areas. Applicants with different studies from the above mentioned will not be considered.

• Interested candidates should be preferably in their 3rd and/or last year (or having accomplished 50% of the credits) of their undergraduate studies by the time of accepting the fellowship. Graduate students won’t be eligible for this call.

*Important note: Please take into account that depending on your nationality, you might be required to get a student visa. Therefore, if you are awarded with one of our summer fellowships, please make sure you will have your visa ready before the beginning of your stay.

II. Conditions

• The research stays at ICIQ will be from June 1st to September 14th, with a maximum stay of up to 3 months. ICIQ Summer Fellows will receive stipend of 30€ per day (maximum 900€ per month) for the period of their in-person stay at ICIQ. If they agree with their supervisor to complete part of their fellowship remotely, there will be no stipend for that time-period. In addition, if a fellow’s stay is less than 3 months, the student will receive an amount proportional to their time spent at ICIQ.

  • For the beneficiaries of the scholarships who are considered non-residents, article 25 of the TRILNR establishes that the withholding to be practiced in general will be of 24%. However, it will be 19% in the case of taxpayer’s resident in a Member State of the European Union or the European Economic Area.

• Fellows with nationalities outside the EU are required to obtain their own medical insurance for the duration of their stay at ICIQ.

• EU nationals are required to obtain their European Health Insurance card before coming to ICIQ (which is free of charge but must be obtained in your country of origin). 

III. Research Groups and their Projects

• SF 2026-01 NL Prof. Núria López: Machine Learning Models for Materials in Energy

• SF 2026-02 FM Prof. Feliu Maseras: Computational Homogeneous Catalysis

• SF 2026-03 KV Prof. Katherine Villa: Programmable Micromotors Powered and Guided by Light

• SF 2026-04 MH Prof. Mónica H. Pérez-Temprano: Novel Synthetic and Mechanistic Tactics Using Earth-Abundant Transition Metal Catalysts

• SF 2026-05 AE Prof. Antonio Echavarren: Gold(I) Cavitands for Catalytic Small-Molecule Activation

• SF 2026-06 EP Prof. Emilio Palomares: Materials for Energy

• SF 2026-07 BP Prof. Beatriz Prieto: Multi-functional sensors to monitor bacterial biofilm growth

• SF 2026-08 AK Prof. Arjan Kleij: Dual Co/photo Catalysis for New Reaction Discovery

• SF 2026-09 ALL Prof. Antoni Llobet: Molecular redox catalysts for the generation of solar fuels

IV. Application process/documents

Interested candidates will be required to complete the application form and submit the following documents:

• Motivation Letter: Please express your interest in joining ICIQ this Summer. Please indicate also your availability of dates to start and finish your Summer stage at ICIQ.

• CV

• Academic record: transcript of records since the beginning of Bachelor, showing the programme, the university, the dates, the credits in each course, grades (and corresponding scale), and average if available. For academic records not issued in Catalan, Spanish or English, a certified translation in one of the above-mentioned languages should be provided.

Only applications received online via ICIQ’s Career Portal will be considered https://careers.iciq.org/.

Please complete the application form and submit the documents required as an attachment.

NOTE: Although applicants can select up to two ICIQ research groups, the first option will be always prioritized for the selection process.

V. Selection and Evaluation process

The evaluation and selection of the candidates will be performed by an internal selection committee, composed of the Summer Fellow project supervisor and supported by the Human Resources team, following this procedure:

1. Submitted proposals will be checked for eligibility and those not fulfilling all the criteria will be rejected. It will not be possible to modify the application or to add missing documentation after the call deadline.

2. The selection will be merit-based according to the Requirements described in Section I and following the Evaluation Report format designed for this programme: letter of motivation, academic record and CV.

3. All candidates will be notified by the end of April of the selection process. After acceptance by all successful candidates, a final list of the awardees will be available in ICIQ's website.

4. In order to be admitted as a Summer Fellow, candidates can begin their stay at ICIQ from June 1st, up to September 14th. The exact dates of a candidate’s stay must be noted in the application.

5. ICIQ follows in its selection process a gender equally opportunity policy and a non-discrimination policy on the basis of age, ethnic or social origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation, language and disability and following the OTM-R principles as established through the HR Seal in Excellence as Awarded by the European Commission.