Northumbria University is one of four regional universities to receive funding to support the next generation of doctoral-level bioscientists.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has awarded almost £6m to Northumbria, Newcastle (lead), Durham and Teesside universities, working jointly with industry partners, to fund doctoral studentships in bioscience.
Known as the North East England Doctoral Landscape in Biosciences (NEEDL), the scheme aims to train the next generation of scientists in technical and professional skills and to facilitate diverse research careers in modern, sustainable, biosciences. The goal is to support all students in delivering impactful research that can make a real difference and contribute to solving real world problems in areas such as engineering biology, microbiomes, nutrition and neuroscience.
NEEDL will create a total of 100 doctoral studentships across five cohorts over eight years, with the first students arriving in October 2025. A selection of these studentships will be supervised by academics at Northumbria along with partners at another one of the regional institutions or industry, positively enhancing collaborative work in the region.
Each year the grant will fund ten studentships with the partner universities collectively funding a further ten studentships.
Speaking on the funding award, Project co-lead and Head of Department for Applied Sciences at Northumbria Univeristy, Professor Gary Black said: “This funding is a major step towards helping to train the next generation across a whole spectrum of disciplines. NEEDL will allow us to pool our resources, our expertise and our established industry partnerships to support a host of new doctoral students as they embark on their research careers.
“We’ve also committed to a number of widening participation targets that will ensure that we’re engaging with researchers from as many different backgrounds as possible, including traditionally underrepresented groups with the aim of ensuring equitable access to research careers.
“We’re really looking forward to welcoming our first cohort and to seeing what all our students can achieve, and the difference they can make, over the next eight years.”
Studentships will be available across five key training themes including:
- Engineering Biology, Computational Biology and Industrial Biotechnology
- Structural Biology, Chemical Biology and Anti-Microbial Drug Discovery
- Microbes, Microbiomes and Host-Microbe Interactions
- Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition
- Regenerative Biology, Neuroscience and Ageing
The awardees will be based in the Departments of Applied Sciences and Sport, Exercise, & Rehabilitation at Northumbria University. Applied Sciences has an extensive portfolio of research subjects including biology, biomedical sciences, chemistry, forensic science, food and nutritional sciences. Sport, Exercise, & Rehabilitation has a growing reputation for excellence in research with work seeking to optimise human performance in many different contexts, using a wide array of multidisciplinary methods. Our academics are nationally and internationally renowned within their fields. Our research in this area is ranked 8th in the UK for research power (2021 Research Excellence Framework), with the highest possible rating for our research environment and the highest rating for research impact across the university.
For more information or to register your interest in doctoral studentships at Northumbria please contact Meng Zhang, meng.zhang@northumbria.ac.uk, for Applied Sciences projects and Stuart Goodall, stuart.goodall@northumbria.ac.uk, for Sport, Exercise, & Rehabilitation projects.
Northumbria University is dedicated to reducing health and social inequalities, contributing to the regional and national workforce and improving social, economic and health outcomes for the most marginalised in society. Through its new Centre for Health and Social Equity, known as CHASE, researchers will be delivering world-leading health and social equity research and creating innovative, evidence-based policies and data-driven solutions to bring impactful change across the region, the UK and globally.
Within CHASE our researchers are using the latest technologies across genomics, proteomics, epigenetics and metabolomics to further our understanding of diseas, ageing, drug delivery, nutrition and health at an individual level.
