University of Exeter’s Living Systems Institute – Ph.D. Studentships 2024/25

The University of Exeter’s Living Systems Institute is seeking exceptional candidates for fully funded studentships available for successful Home and International applicants for intake in autumn 2025. This includes payment of tuition fees, a personal stipend for 3.5 years (currently £19,237 per year 2024/25), and a training budget.

Programme Overview

Modern scientific innovation involves the integration of diverse fields and the bridging of pure and application-oriented research. This requires a new generation of scientists who are trained to think and experiment beyond traditional boundaries. The recently established Living Systems Institute provides this opportunity by housing world-leading Biologists, Physicists, Mathematicians, Computational Scientists, and Engineers who work together using cutting-edge technologies. Our mission is to uncover the secrets of life across all scales - from individual atoms to whole organisms - and thereby develop new approaches for improving health and treating disease.

We wish to recruit highly motivated and imaginative students from across the full range of disciplines mentioned above to join our thriving community of over 50 Ph.D. students.

Funding

Places are fully funded with funding also available for overseas applicants. This includes payment of tuition fees, a personal stipend for 3.5 years (currently £19,237 per year 2024/25), and a training budget.

We also welcome applications from candidates who can provide partial or full funding from other sources.

Training

The variety of research systems, topics, and approaches in the Living Systems Institute provides a multitude of training opportunities for our Ph.D. students. Throughout your studies, we support you to develop broad scientific and personal skillsets. We tailor training needs on an individual basis, including secondment opportunities in other labs within the institute. Our interdisciplinary training programme includes physical, mathematical, and computational analyses of living systems alongside exposure to the latest techniques in molecular cell biology.

Research Culture

You will join a friendly and diverse community of students within the Living Systems Institute. Our research staff and students experience a vibrant research culture. Within the programme, Ph.D. student-led seminar series, journal clubs, and discussion groups are aimed at developing peer-to-peer learning and discourse.

Ph.D. Project

Your Ph.D. project will work across disciplines to generate new and important knowledge.

The Living Systems Institute is home to mathematicians, physicists, bioengineers, biologists, and biomedical scientists. Our interdisciplinary and collaborative research philosophy is embodied in three cross-cutting themes:

• Mathematics of Life - Developing and analysing mathematical models to explain and predict function and dysfunction in biological systems.
• Physics of Life - Uncovering the fundamental physical principles that govern the dynamic organisation of living systems.
• Engineering Life - Reverse engineering biological phenomena from molecular and cellular components.

These themes drive investigation, discovery, and application across all scales of life: gene expression and genomics, structure/function, phages and viruses, microbes, stem cells and development, and neuroscience.

Find out more

For more information about the Living Systems Institute and our available studentships please click here.

Entry Requirements

Applicants must hold a university degree that is accepted by the University of Exeter for registration as a graduate student such as a BSc, MSc, or equivalent with first or upper second-class honours. We encourage applicants from a wide range of backgrounds across Biological, Medical, and Physical Sciences as well as Engineering and Computation.

Students must provide evidence for proficiency in English by a certified test such as IELTS. For more information about the English Language requirements please click here.

Funding is available for overseas students. International applicants need to be aware that you will have to cover the cost of your student visa, healthcare surcharge, and other costs of moving to the UK to do a PhD. The Institute has a strong commitment to inclusivity, we, therefore, welcome applications from individuals regardless of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, age, gender, or disability status.

How to Apply

Apply here

You will need to upload the following documents to the studentship application form. Please note our preferred format is PDF, each file named with your surname and the name of the document, e.g., “Smith – CV.pdf”, “Smith – Cover Letter.pdf”, “Smith – Transcript.pdf”:

• Your CV
• A personal statement that should include why you are interested in interdisciplinary approaches to research. You should also express your preference of which research projects you are interested in (up to three) from the list available on the LSI webpages.
• Transcript(s) giving full details of subjects studied and grades/marks obtained
• If you are not a national of a majority English-speaking country you will need to submit evidence of your current proficiency in English. For further details of the University’s English language requirements please click here.
• Please ensure that two references are submitted by the application closing date of 10th January 2025. Alternatively, references can be sent directly to pgrapplicants@exeter.ac.uk, though must be received by the closing date.

The deadline for applications is midnight 10th January 2025.

References should be submitted to us directly in the form of a letter. Referees must email their references to us from their institutional email accounts. We cannot accept references from personal/private email accounts unless it is a scanned document on institutional headed paper and signed by the referee.

All application documents must be submitted in English. Certified translated copies of academic qualifications must also be provided.