The Natural Resources Institute (NRI) of the University Greenwich is pleased to announce its membership in the London Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Programme, known as LIDo, one of the largest Doctoral Training Partnerships funded by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
LIDo has just been commissioned for a further five years by the BBSRC, part of UK Research and Innovation, under the 2019 DTP3 competition. The award from 2020 onward will fund 190 PhD studentships overall, of which a minimum of 55 are earmarked as industrial collaboration ‘CASE’ studentships. The funding represents an investment of over £20M in the development of future bioscience researchers.
“We are excited for NRI to be joining this collaboration of world-class universities and specialist institutions,” says Professor Andrew Westby, Director of NRI. “We are keen to see NRI’s experience in agricultural science and sustainable development helping to shape new opportunities for innovative interdisciplinary doctoral training.”
The LIDo partners are University College London, King’s College London, Queen Mary University London, Royal Veterinary College, Birkbeck College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine plus two new members: Royal Holloway University London and NRI.
LIDo also welcomes four new ‘Associate Partners’, Unilever, Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, the Food Standards Agency and the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Each Associate partner will be contributing at least three additional studentships as well as providing projects and collaborative opportunities for LIDo students.
Around half of the studentships will be for projects jointly supervised in two different LIDo institutions, reflecting the highly collaborative and interdisciplinary training mission of the programme. LIDo has a particular emphasis on combining biology with computational, materials and physical sciences and provides intensive training in coding for biologists and in biology for students with a physical/computational sciences background.
NRI’s Director of Research, Professor Ben Bennett says, “We are delighted to be part of LIDo, and aim to further enhance the quality of the PhD student experience through this prestigious collaboration.”
LIDo emphasises equality and diversity through outreach activities and coaching for minority applicants as well as summer undergraduate placements for students studying at less research-intensive institutions across London and the South East region.
Links: BBSRC announcement | LIDo