NATO STO Women and Girls in Science Challenge 2026 – YOA

Deadline: March 11, 2026

Applications are open for the NATO STO Women and Girls in Science Challenge 2026. The Women & Girls in Science Challenge invites younger ladies and women to submit visionary analysis proposals addressing urgent challenges in the sector of defence analysis. Launched yearly on 11 February, in celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the WGS is a NATO Science & Technology Organization (STO) variety of thought initiative.

This yr’s problem introduces a brand new and revolutionary foresight strategy that asks contributors to discover fictional situations of disruption that take a look at the resilience of the trendy world. Although the situations are imagined, they’re rooted in actual-world dependencies and rising dangers, encouraging contributors to assume creatively, analytically, and strategically about the way forward for safety and defence analysis.

The 5 situations are:

• A Day Without Space, exploring the results of shedding entry to house-based mostly capabilities similar to communication and commentary;
• A Day Without Power, analyzing widespread vitality disruption and its cascading results;
• A Day Without the Internet, imagining the influence of a chronic lack of world connectivity and digital providers;
• A Day Without Antibiotics, confronting a situation the place antibiotic provide is halted and nations discover themselves unable to deal with frequent bacterial infections; and
• A Day Without Boots on the Ground, contemplating safety challenges in an excessive atmosphere the place bodily army presence is now not attainable.

Benefits

• A singular expertise to share your analysis concepts that influence world safety with NATO management. All 12 finalists will obtain formal recognition from the NATO Chief Scientist, and the three chosen winners will obtain the OPPORTUNITY to go to the Centre for Maritime Research Experimentation (CMRE) in la Spezia, Italy.
• Finalists can even have the chance to hitch STEM Forward, a group that brings collectively professionals and specialists from the STEM ecosystem for the good thing about scientific collaboration and enhancement of the NATO S&T data base.

Eligibility

• Open to younger ladies who’re college college students (bachelor, grasp, PhD), early profession researchers, or just in beginning a profession in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and/or defence.
• Applicants should be younger ladies aged 18-35 years, affiliated with a college and nationals of NATO nations.
• Proposals should goal to reply the query “How would your research idea provide a solution for one of the five fictional foresight scenarios?”.
• Applications should be submitted in English.

Application

This kind will ask contributors to point:

• A title for his or her proposal
• The chosen fictional foresight situation
• Relevant background data
• The proposal’s relevance to defence and safety
• Clear scientific targets
• Key scientific subjects to be addressed, and
• The anticipated exploitation potential and societal influence

The deadline for submissions is 11 March 2026, 23:59 CET. Late entries won’t be thought of.

Click here to apply

For extra data, go to NATO STO Women and Girls in Science Challenge.