ARC Industry Fellowships

An ARC Industry Fellowship is a salary- and project-support fellowship awarded under the Australian Research Council‘s (ARC) Linkage Program, within the ARC’s National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP). Unlike an ARC Linkage Project, which funds a defined collaborative research project carried out by a team, an Industry Fellowship funds an individual researcher’s salary and project costs to work across the university-industry boundary — either an academic researcher taking up a placement with an industry Partner Organisation, or an industry-based researcher taking up a placement at a university. The scheme is distinct from the open, non-partnered ARC Future Fellowship, which sits in the ARC’s Discovery Program rather than Linkage and carries no industry-placement requirement.

The three fellowship streams

ARC Industry Fellowships are organised into three career-stage streams, each with its own salary contribution, maximum duration, and project-cost allowance. Figures below are drawn from ARC-derived university research-office guidance current for recent rounds; exact amounts are set per round and should be confirmed against the current Industry Fellowships Grant Guidelines on arc.gov.au before an application is prepared.

• Early Career Industry Fellowships — for researchers early in their career; funds a salary contribution for up to three years plus project costs of up to roughly $150,000 in total. As of mid-2026, university research-office guidance notes this stream has been paused pending finalisation of the ARC’s NCGP Policy Review, so current availability should be checked directly with the ARC.
• Mid-Career Industry Fellowships — for researchers at a more established career stage; funds a salary contribution for up to four years plus project costs of up to roughly $290,000 in total. This stream has also been reported as paused pending the same policy review.
• Industry Laureate Fellowships — the most senior stream, funding a salary contribution for four to five years, support for postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers attached to the fellow, project costs of up to roughly $1.5 million in total, and an additional annual allowance for ambassadorial/outreach activities associated with the fellowship.

Two-way mobility as the defining feature

What makes a fellowship an ARC Industry Fellowship, rather than a Linkage Project or an open Discovery-Program fellowship, is the requirement that the funded researcher physically move across the academia-industry boundary for the fellowship period — either into an industry Partner Organisation from a university base, or into a university from an industry base. The stated aim is to build two-way mobility and skills in research collaboration, translation and commercialisation on both sides, not simply to fund a joint research output. A research office assessing eligibility should confirm that the proposed arrangement genuinely involves a placement and a receiving/hosting organisation, not merely a research collaboration agreement between two employers who each keep their own staff in place.

How it differs from an ARC Linkage Project and an ARC Future Fellowship

• ARC Linkage Project — funds a collaborative research project delivered by a university-based team plus a contributing Partner Organisation; no individual placement or salary-fellowship structure; funding is for project costs matched by partner cash/in-kind contributions.
• ARC Industry Fellowship — funds an individual researcher’s salary and project costs for a placement that physically crosses the academia-industry boundary; sits in the Linkage Program family alongside Linkage Projects, ARC Centres of Excellence, and the Industrial Transformation Research Program.
• ARC Future Fellowship — funds a mid-career researcher’s salary for open, investigator-driven research with no industry-placement or partner-organisation requirement; sits in the ARC’s Discovery Program, not Linkage.

In practice, a research office routes a proposal to Industry Fellowships when the goal is moving a specific person into (or out of) an industry setting for an extended placement, to Linkage Projects when the goal is funding a joint project with a co-investing partner but no personnel placement, and to Future Fellowships when the goal is supporting an individual’s own research program with no partner or placement involved at all.

Program status note

ARC scheme parameters, and even whether a given stream is currently open for applications, change between funding rounds and policy reviews. The Early Career and Mid-Career Industry Fellowships streams have been reported by university research-office sources as paused pending the ARC’s National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) Policy Review; this status was not independently confirmed directly against arc.gov.au for this page (the ARC site was unreachable at time of writing) and should be checked against the ARC’s own current funding-scheme pages before relying on it for an application-planning decision.

Illustrative example

The following is an illustrative composite, not a real funded fellowship. A postdoctoral researcher in materials engineering takes up an Early Career Industry Fellowship to work embedded within a battery-manufacturing company’s applied research team for two and a half years. The ARC funds a salary contribution and approximately $120,000 in project costs over the fellowship, and the company hosts the researcher on-site, giving them access to pilot-scale manufacturing equipment not available at the university. At the end of the fellowship, the researcher returns to an academic position with an established industry collaboration and a body of translational research output.

Counter-example

A university chemistry department and a chemicals manufacturer that agree to co-fund a three-year joint research project, with each partner’s staff remaining at their own employer throughout and no individual researcher relocating, would be pursued as an ARC Linkage Project, not an Industry Fellowship — there is a genuine Partner Organisation contribution, but no placement of a named fellow across the academia-industry boundary.