After three and a half years and seven rounds of applications, you might expect the National Industry PhD Program to have lost some of its shine. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Round 7 of the Program, which closed at the end of March 2026, received 191 applications, the highest number to date.

There’s something quietly revealing about conferences where the mood is optimistic, the debates are thoughtful, and yet you leave with a sense that the most important questions still haven’t quite been answered.