PhD funding programme launched
£48 million over 10 years to attract best talent
By Paul Seagrove
Trinity College and the University of Cambridge’s new £48 million programme enabling fully-funded PhDs has been launched. It is seeking the brightest minds from across the world to conduct ground-breaking research, creating the next generation of pioneering treatments, technology and services.
The Trinity Cambridge Research Studentships (TCRS) have been created to respond to declining funding opportunities for PhD research, both in the sciences and the humanities. In the next decade, the programme will support up to 300 fully funded PhD studentships, depending on the breakdown between home and international students.
Trinity Fellow and Nobel Laureate Dr Venki Ramakrishnan said:
"PhD students are the lifeblood of new research, making breakthroughs in all areas of science, and it is very important that we be able to attract the best brains to Cambridge wherever they may be from. The Trinity Cambridge Research Studentships Programme will greatly facilitate that goal."
The first students funded by the new programme will begin in October 2025; anyone applying to join a PhD programme in 2025-26 will be considered for this funding.
Trinity College
Cambridge Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education Professor Bhaskar Vira said:
"If the UK is to continue to be world leading in research, it is important to support the next generation of PhD students. We are grateful for the funding provided to postgraduate research students through the UK government’s investments in science and research, but also aware of worrying pressures on budgets."
We work closely with many external partners and benefactors who allow us to continue to invest in this future research capacity, for the wider benefit of society. We welcome the generous support of Trinity College for this new scheme, which will ensure more students are able to continue their research careers here in Cambridge, and look forward to working with partners who would be interested in collaborating with us on this initiative."
Cambridge University has 4,339 PhDs students (2022-2023 figures) but the availability of fully funded places has declined by an estimated 140 per year since 2018 and analysis suggests this will get worse.
Senior Tutor at Trinity Professor Catherine Barnard said:
"We are committed to using our resources to support the next generation of world-class researchers whose work will improve the lives of many and help tackle some of the toughest problems the world faces."
"Trinity’s five living Nobel Laureates show that being able to change the world begins with your PhD. Whether you want to create new life-saving drugs, discover new planets or new understandings of the relationship between economics and ethics, Cambridge is the place to realise your ambitions – and change the world."
The PhD awards will be highly competitive and seek students with the potential to be the Nobel Laureates of the future and help increase Cambridge’s £30bn contribution to the UK economy.
Professor Didier Queloz
Trinity Fellow Professor Didier Queloz, who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2019 for the discovery of the first exoplanet during his PhD research, said Cambridge was an extraordinary place.
"When I came ten years ago, I was attracted by the diversity of the culture, the Cambridge way of life – in the sense that you interact with a lot of people, you have this mixing of different ideas - the College system is really unique in the world. We should maximize the number of PhD students and the diversity of PhD students."
With the first year of the programme fully funded by Trinity College and the University of Cambridge, matched funding is sought to unlock resources and achieve the programme’s 10-year goal of £48 million in new funding for PhDs.
Trinity student Bjorn Olaisen chose Cambridge over Harvard for his PhD in medical sciences in the lab of Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, where he is investigating the ageing process.
Bjorn said full PhD funding was key to enabling him to focus on his research and refine ideas to pursue after his PhD on how to develop therapies that could enable us to live better for longer, with interest already from Cambridgeshire biotech companies.
"You feel a great sense of gratitude because someone has paid for you to do research so you get extra inspiration, an extra drive and I really feel that. ‘So as my supervisor put it, you can do something in your PhD that leads to a Nobel Prize. The sky is the limit."
The Trinity Cambridge Research Studentships builds on the success of the Student Support Initiative by making even more financial help available to PhD students.
To find out more about studying for a PhD at Cambridge go to: https:www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/apply
Published 11th November 2024
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