05 Nov 07

Oxford University’s biomedical postgraduate students are set to share in a £137 million investment boost from the Wellcome Trust to fully fund twenty student training programmes at UK universities.

The Trust, the UK's largest medical research charity, will make available £137 million over 9 years for four-year doctorate programmes for basic biomedical scientists and doctorate programmes for clinicians.

The investment will see an extension of the Wellcome Trust's flagship four-year doctorate programmes for basic scientists, aimed at supporting the most promising students to undertake in-depth postgraduate research training. Specialist training will be provided at the cutting-edge of a wide range of important biomedical research areas ranging from structural biology to epidemiology, through to immunology and neuroscience.
 
The Oxford four-year programmes include developmental and cell biology; immunology and infectious diseases; structural biology and bioinformatics; chromosome and developmental biology and neuroscience. First year graduate students train in a range of laboratories and with a variety of supervisors, enabling them to develop broad experience and build a support network of peers before going on to choose the doctoral research project to be undertaken in the remaining three years.

Professor Nick Rawlins, Chairman of the Graduate Studies Committee for the Medical Sciences Division, and Watts Professor of Experimental Psychology, said: ‘Oxford’s exceptional strength and history of innovation in graduate training in the biomedical sciences is underscored by the renewal of its existing, flagship four-year programmes (in Neuroscience, and in Structural Biology), and the additional award of two completely new programmes (in infection and immunity, and in chromosome and developmental biology.)’

He also added: ‘In response to the success of these bids for graduate funding, Oxford University is making substantial provision from the John Fell OUP Fund to set up a new Doctoral Training Centre that will oversee and coordinate all these graduate programmes. This will ensure that the outstanding students these programmes will attract all receive the best possible training, with successful developments in any programme being rapidly taken up by the others.’

Oxford University’s Medical Sciences Division has a comprehensive divisional training infrastructure available to all its graduate students, catering for a wide-range of individuals needs through its Skills Training Programme, which includes writing and presentation skills, intellectual property, and project and research management.

Dr Candace Hassall, who oversees the doctorate programmes for basic scientists at the Wellcome Trust, said: ‘The success of the doctorate programmes funded to date shows that they attract the best students who are enabled to make an informed choice in the selection of their doctorate and can help to develop their own research project. It’s important that doctoral students receive generous research funding, allowing students to work on important and novel projects without cost being an unreasonable barrier.’

The programmes will be available for admission in October 2008 and will be open to all Home/EU and overseas students. It is anticipated that these programmes will be open to applications from the beginning of December 2007, and further information on how to apply will be available from mid–November 2007. In addition to the doctorate programmes for basic scientists, the Wellcome Trust is also launching a number of three-year doctorate programmes for clinical scientists, to be announced in the New Year.