Durham Awarded Large Research Funding

Durham University has been awarded a share of £9 million investment for postgraduate training and development in biosciences.

The Durham-Newcastle-Liverpool partnership will get £4.5 million from the Biotech and Bioscience Research Council with the remainder from other sources.

This award comes as a result of Universities and Science Minister David Willetts announcing £67 million national investment in postgraduate training in this field.

The money will fund 15 PhDs and 5 undergrad summer bursaries in Durham as well as 14 Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) and industrial CASE studentship awards.

Mr Willetts said: "The brightest and best students will be finding solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing us all, from food security through to renewable energy".

Prof Tom McLeish, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Durham said: "Research and teaching is at the core of what we do at Durham and this announcement will allow us to continue to invest in world-class bioscience skills and training, in collaboration with our partners.

To account for the rapidly rising cost of research the BBSRC is awarding higher research grants at £5,000 per student per year.

Each DTP student will complete a 3 month professional non-lab internship to widen their experiences and skills to apply to their PHD work.
The internships will be undertaken in policymaking, media and industry.

This grant further demonstrates Durham’s place as one of the UK’s and world’s leading research institutions in a number of disciplines.