The Obsidian Science Fellowship
Six months each. A plan, a campaign, and both founders in the room. No fee.
Every campaign we run under the fellowship carries this mark.
Next selection1 February 2027
About
We are a digital marketing agency based in Larnaca, Cyprus, with a representative office in London. Nine people: strategy, paid media, search, creative, conversion and email, all in house rather than subcontracted out.
Our commercial work is with ecommerce companies. We take a business that is selling but not scaling predictably, find the one thing limiting its growth, fix it, and measure what changed. We have done that for more than one hundred and sixty brands, and we have been a certified Google Partner every year since 2023.
This programme exists because the same skill set is worth more elsewhere. A researcher with a genuine finding and no audience has exactly the problem we solve every day, and almost none of the budget it normally takes to solve it. Our commercial work pays for the two we take on each year.
With a representative office in Covent Garden, London.
Paid media, SEO, creative, CRO, branding and email, in house.
Ecommerce companies across Cyprus, Greece and the UK.
Certified 2023, 2024 and 2025. Four industry award wins and shortlists.
Founded and run by Christos Loizou, CEO, and Michalis Nikolaou, COO. They are the two who mentor the researchers on this programme.
The Fellowship
Nothing is scaled down for being free. A campaign built here is built the way a paying client's is.
Put the work in front of funders, participants, journalists and policymakers, rather than waiting for them to find it.
Make the research findable by the people already searching for the problem it solves.
Turn attention into the thing you actually need: a sign up, an application, a donation, a reply.
A presentation serious enough that the work is judged on the work.
Communicate the finding to a non-specialist without diluting what it says or overstating what it shows.
Keep the audience once you have it, so the next paper does not start from zero.
Plain numbers on what the campaign reached and what it changed. No vanity metrics.
No fee, no contract, no equity, no claim over the research, and no obligation to mention us anywhere.
A campaign is not one advert. It is a chain, and it breaks at whichever link is weakest. We start by finding out where reach is being lost for this particular piece of work, because it is rarely the same place twice. Sometimes the science is findable but unreadable. Sometimes it reads beautifully and nobody can find it. Sometimes both are fine and there is simply nowhere for an interested person to go next.
Then we build the missing pieces. That might mean a page that explains the finding in language a funder understands, a search presence for the terms your audience actually types, a set of adverts aimed at three hundred specific people rather than three hundred thousand, or an email sequence so the interest you generate this month is still there next year.
You approve every description of the science before it goes out. We will push you to make it plainer. We will not let you overstate what the work shows, and we would rather lose the campaign than misrepresent a result.
The work, the data, the credit and the audience are yours. We take no rights over any of it.
Our time and the campaign build cost you nothing. Advertising platforms still charge for their own placements, and we will tell you upfront what is needed and help you apply for the grant programmes that cover it.
One mentorship starts every six months. It is what two founders can give properly, and we intend to raise it as the business grows.
The Fellowship
The six months are the work. The fellowship is what continues afterwards.
Every campaign we build under the fellowship carries the seal. It tells anyone who meets the work that it was selected and reviewed, and that the reach behind it was granted rather than bought. We keep a public record of who holds it and for what.
Nobody is handed a report and shown the door at month six. Fellows keep the accounts, the plan and the access. We check in, we answer, and we help with the next round of funding when it comes.
Fellows are introduced to the ones selected before and after them. Different fields, the same problem of being unheard. Two a year is small on purpose, and small is what makes a group of people actually know one another.
Selection
One mentorship starts every six months. Two a year is the honest limit of what two founders can give properly, and we would rather do two well than twelve badly. We intend to raise the number as the business grows.
Next selection1 February 2027Applications are open now and read as they arrive.
Researchers a year
One starts every six months
Michalis NikolaouCo-founder & COO
Christos LoizouCEO & Co-founder
Six months of one to one mentoring from both founders, working to a written plan, with a campaign built and run by our team alongside it. Not an account manager. Not a scheduled check in.
What we look forAn achievement that pushes humanity in the right direction, and a reason to believe that more people knowing about it would change something.
The Plan
Not six months of encouragement. A structured plan with a named outcome at each stage, written down at the start so both of us can be held to it.
We learn the research well enough not to embarrass you, then map who actually needs it: funders, institutions, clinicians, industry, the public, or some combination. Most researchers have never been asked to name that audience precisely. It is where the six months either works or does not.
You end withA written statement of the work, the audience, and the single outcome the six months is aimed at.
A written strategy covering the three things researchers most often need and least often have: market needs, which funders and institutions are actively looking for work like yours and what they respond to; funding, which calls and grants to go for, in what order, and how to frame the application; and awareness, how the work gets known by the people whose attention changes something.
You end withA plan with dates, targets and the reasoning behind each one, yours to keep whatever happens afterwards.
The campaign goes live and our team runs it: creative, targeting, pages, search, content, email, tracking. Alongside it you meet both founders one to one. That is where the mentoring actually happens, on real decisions with real money and real deadlines, rather than in the abstract.
You end withA campaign in market, and the judgement to read what it is telling you.
An honest read of what the six months did. What reached whom, what converted, which funding routes opened, and which of it is worth continuing. Then we hand you the accounts, the assets and a plan for running it without us.
You end withEverything we built, and a written plan for the twelve months after we step back.
Who It Is For
Work that stands up to scrutiny
Published, peer reviewed, or recognised by people qualified to judge it. We are not equipped to assess a claim ourselves, so we rely on those who are.
Something specific that reach would change
Funding, study recruitment, adoption of a method, a policy decision, or public understanding of a finding that is being misread.
No marketing budget already in place
Individual researchers, university groups, non-profits and early spinouts. If there is a marketing team and a budget, this is not the right programme.
Any field, anywhere
Discipline and country do not matter. We work in English, and we can run campaigns in other languages with your help on the wording.
If the work is good and nobody has heard of it, that is a problem we can fix.
Tell us what you are working on. There is no cost and no catch.
What we ask of you
An hour at the start so we understand the work well enough not to embarrass you. A read of anything we write about the science before it is published. A reply when we ask which of two claims is the defensible one. And roughly an hour a fortnight with the founders across the six months.
Everything else is ours. You will not be asked to write copy, choose headlines, learn an advertising platform, or sit in a weekly status call. If the campaign is going badly we will tell you that, rather than send you a chart that hides it.
You approve every description of the science before it goes out. We will push you to make it plainer. We will not let you overstate what the work shows, and we would rather end the programme than misrepresent a result.
Why We Do It
What we believe
The gap between how good a piece of work is and how many people know about it has very little to do with the work. It has to do with who had a budget. We spend our days closing that gap for companies selling things. It costs us almost nothing to close it for someone curing something.
Know a scientist whose work deserves an audience?
Nominations are welcome. It does not have to be your own work.
Apply or nominate. One form, whether it is your own research or someone else's. Next selection 1 February 2027. About ten minutes.
Thank you. Two researchers are chosen each year and we read every application ourselves, so give us a few days. You will hear back either way.