Training

Studentships will last for 3.5 years full-time or the equivalent period part-time. Most students are expected to have a Masters qualification (including MSc, MRes or MSci) already. Exceptional students at Bachelors level will also be considered. Training falls into 3 elements:

-          Pre-project training (A to C): Before finally confirming your PhD topic, you will spend 6 months strengthening key skills, either attending postgraduate training courses (selected from an extensive list available) or trying out mini-projects (up to 3 months in duration) or a mixture of both. We have developed a flexible programme that will be tailored to your individual needs, guided by academic tutors.

-          PhD project (D): You will spend most of your time conducting original research, interacting with your supervisory team and other collaborators where applicable across the partner organisations or beyond. Your project will include development of new theory and/or quantitative methods, rather than just applying existing software. It may also include collection of new data in laboratory, field or remote-sensing.

-          Cohort training (E to G): You will engage in exciting activities strongly linked to real world problems with your fellow PhD students, including: cohort-training days finding out from practitioners about the challenges/opportunities in their area; working in ‘tiger teams’ to deliver a new piece of software or database for a non-academic stakeholder; and working together on hackathons to spread computational expertise. As a result, every student will have experience working with stakeholders, with researchers in other disciplines, and gain additional impacts and research outputs.