25 October 2007

Wellcome Trust backs Biomedical Postgraduate study at Dundee

The Wellcome Trust has announced its support for two major programmes of postgraduate study at the University of Dundee, including a new three-year PhD for clinical scientists which forges new links between the College of Life Sciences and the School of Medicine.

The University will share in a £137 million investment the charity is making in training the next generation of top-level scientists. The Wellcome Trust is funding two extensive PhD programmes at Dundee.

"The Wellcome Trust should be complemented on its forward-thinking in supporting these prestigious programmes," said Professor Mike Ferguson, Dean of Research in the University’s College of Life Sciences.

"The clinical PhD programmes are a great idea. Biomedical science moves at a fantastic pace and it is crucial to produce medical doctors with research science training to drive future medical developments and ensure that the public benefits from scientific discoveries and technological developments."

"The College of Life Sciences at is delighted to collaborate with our Medical School to provide an innovative and dynamic PhD programme for clinicians and we look forward to receiving the first intake in 2008."

Professor Irene Leigh, Head of the College of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing, welcomed the "highly significant contribution" from the Wellcome Trust to provide future academic clinicians with a robust training in biomedical research. "This consolidates research collaborations with the College of Life Science particularly in the fields of translational and experimental medicine," said Professor Leigh.

The Wellcome-funded projects are among the most prestigious PhD programmes in the UK.

The University has been running the Wellcome-funded four-year PhD programme in Molecular and Cellular Biology for the past seven years. The programme accepts five students each year.

The new Clinical PhD programme will accept five students each year for the next three years. It gives clinical PhD students access to the established best practice that has proved so successful for the training of basic scientists.

The Dundee programmes are part of a major investment announcement from the Wellcome Trust in postgraduate biomedical research training in the UK. The Trust, the UK's largest medical research charity, is making available £137 million over 9 years for Four-year PhD programmes for basic biomedical scientists and PhD Programmes for Clinicians.

The investment will see an extension of the Wellcome Trust's flagship Four-year PhD Programmes for basic scientists, aimed at supporting the most promising students to undertake in-depth postgraduate research training. More than twenty such programmes are being awarded to centres of excellence at UK universities. Specialised 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, neuroscience and more.

"The Wellcome Trust has been at the forefront of innovative PhD research training programmes," says Dr Candace Hassall, who oversees the PhD programmes for basic scientists. "The success of the PhD Programmes funded to date shows that they attract the best students who are enabled to make an informed choice in the selection of their PhD supervisors and can help to develop their own research project. Collaborative, often interdisciplinary, research can flourish and the students can build productive and enjoyable networks."

In addition to the PhD programmes for basic scientists, the Wellcome Trust is also launching a number of three year PhD programmes for clinical scientists.

"The need for innovative approaches to support the academic training of young clinicians has never been greater," says Dr John Williams, who oversees the PhD programmes for clinical scientists. "The recognition of the benefits that a programmatic approach has brought to the PhD training of basic scientists has informed the Trust's desire to establish similar programmes tailored to the unique needs of the clinician scientists."

"The programmes will provide the clinical trainee with a structured well mentored environment that will enable them to access high quality research environments that might not have otherwise been available to them. The establishment of Clinical PhD programmes will significantly increase the support that the Trust provides for clinicians wishing to undertake rigorous research training."

Recognising that biomedical research can be expensive, the Wellcome Trust provides realistic research costs to support the students’ PhD projects,

"It's important that PhD students receive generous research funding," says Dr Hassall. "This allows students to work on important and novel projects without cost being an unreasonable barrier."

More information on the Wellcome Trust's PhD programmes is available at www.wellcome.ac.uk/phd.

Notes for editors

1. The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending around £500 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk

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