
In Dec 2008 UCL won funding for seven new Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs). In addition, UCL's doctoral centre at the Life Sciences Interface, CoMPLEX was renewed last year.
This gives UCL a total of nine CDTs, which will '
generate the scientists needed for Britain's future.'
Each UCL Centre will receive around £6m in funding to pay for a total of 400 students (50 per Centre), to take part in 4-year doctorate programmes over the next five years. The first intake of doctorate students will join in October 2009.
The CDT vision
EPSRC's new multidisciplinary CDTs bring together diverse areas of expertise to train engineers and scientists with the skills, knowledge and confidence to tackle today's evolving issues. They also create new working cultures, build relationships between teams in universities and forge lasting links with industry.
Click the links below for further details of each Centre.
- Bioprocess Leadership
Trains bioprocess engineering leaders of the future who will underpin the translation of new scientific advances into safe, selective and manufacturable therapies, at affordable costs.
- CoMPLEX
Brings life and medical scientists together with mathematicians, physical scientists, computer scientists and engineers to tackle the challenges arising from complexity in biology and medicine.
- Energy Demand Reduction & the Built Environment
This Centre will produce the next generation of highly skilled and broadly educated energy researchers to lead and support the complex, multidisciplinary task of driving down energy demand and CO2 emissions of the UK building stock.
- Financial Computing
Spans financial IT, computational finance and financial engineering.
- Molecular Modelling & Materials Science
The MMMS IDC funds doctoral training in all areas of materials science, where computer modelling plays a significant role.
- Photonics Systems Development - (Joint with the University of Cambridge)
Will train students in the skills needed to produce new photonic systems for applications ranging from information display to broadband access and industrial materials processing.
- SECReT
The new national UK training centre for security and crime related research degrees.
- Urban Sustainability & Resilience
Investigates current and future challenges facing our urban environments as well as the opportunities presented.
- Virtual Environments, Imaging &
Visualisation
Supports research engineers studying in areas related to the use of visualisation and imaging in engineering.

"UCL's success in these awards reflects our commitment to the highest rigour in doctoral training, to multidisciplinarity and to powerful engagement with industrial partners."
Professor Malcolm Grant,
UCL President & Provost
Awards have been made to universities around the country, but UCL's is a particularly large allocation, worth around £45 million (the next biggest award to a single HEI was for four centres). The university is known around the world for its excellence in a multitude of research areas, and its commitment to solutions-focused research. In the spirit of UCL's '
Grand Challenges' initiative, these Centres are drawn together by the fact that all of them are aiming at finding solutions to problems affecting the world today. Whether they relate to matters of global health, human wellbeing, sustainable cities, or intercultural interaction, they enable UCL's expertise to flow freely from academics to students, and from students to industry.