New Doctoral Centres

New Doctoral Training Centres revolutionise opportunities for post-graduate research in the School.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council – the UK funding body for science and engineering – has announced that the School of Physics & Astronomy has won a share of the funding for two new centres that will generate the research scientists needed for Britain's future.

The two Centres are in Condensed Matter Physics and in Photonics. The first is led from St Andrews and the second from Heriot-Watt.

Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, announced the £250 million initiative which will create 44 training centres across the UK and generate over 2000 PhD students. They will tackle some of the biggest problems currently facing Britain such as climate change, energy, our ageing population, and high-tech crime.

Professor Mackenzie with some of his equipment used for studying samples at ultra-low temperatures The Scottish Doctoral Training Centre for Condensed Matter Physics is a collaborative venture between St Andrews, Edinburgh and Heriot Watt, led by St Andrews under the umbrella of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA).

Professor Andy Mackenzie explained, “Winning this funding is a testament to nearly five years of planning and development work that have gone into setting up SUPA and its Graduate School.”

Professor Mackenzie continued, “All the collegiality and trust necessary for a cross-institutional collaboration had already been built up through working together in SUPA. Now we are looking forward to the real challenge – delivering an internationally leading product for the doctoral students who will join us and, ultimately, the companies and institutions where they will spend their careers.”

Light Rope Professor Malcolm Dunn, also from the School of Physics & Astronomy, led the St Andrews part of a second pan-Scottish Centre funded under this scheme, the Engineering Doctorate Centre for Optics and Photonics, which builds on a long-standing collaboration between Heriot Watt, St Andrews, Strathclyde and Glasgow, further enhanced by the creation of SUPA.

Professor Dunn said "This renewal of support for our inter-institutional Engineering Doctorate Centre will greatly enhance our ability to deliver the talented scientists, technologists and engineers so vital to the future of the UK. In addition the Centre will complement our current diverse and extensive interactions with the optics and photonics industries by opening up new opportunities for collaborations."

The School is delighted to see the continuation of the Photonics EngD programme and the start of the Condensed Matter Doctoral Training Centre. These two postgraduate research degree programmes run alongside our taught postgraduate masters programmes, the twelve-month Photonics and Optoelectronic Devices MSc and the two-year European Masters Mundus Photonics MSc.

EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training are a bold new approach to training PhD students, creating communities of researchers working on current and future challenges. The two with St Andrews involvement will be generously funded, to the tune of over £5M each, and will be tasked with recruiting and training one hundred new doctoral students over the next five years.

Lord Drayson said, “Britain faces many challenges in the 21st Century and needs scientists and engineers with the right skills to find answers to these challenges, build a strong economy and keep us globally competitive. EPSRC’s doctoral training centres will provide a new wave of engineers and scientists to do the job.”

He continued, “This is an exciting, innovative approach to training young researchers and will help build a better future for Britain.”

The centres 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 business and industry.

Professor Dave Delpy, chief executive of EPSRC, said, “People are the heart of our future strategy. We want to drive a modern economy and meet the challenges of tomorrow by investing in talented people and inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers.”

He continued, “EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training expand our existing training portfolio, focus on priority themes for the UK, emerging and multidisciplinary research, and greater collaboration with business.”

Students in these centres will receive a formal programme of taught coursework to develop and enhance their technical interdisciplinary knowledge, and broaden their set of skills. Alongside this they will undertake a challenging and original research project at PhD level.

Professor Mackenzie concluded, “For the St Andrews-led centre the attractiveness of the scheme to industry is exemplified by the fact that over twenty companies and organisations have enthusiastically committed to joining a formal Industrial Associate scheme established by the centre’s management team. They will visit regularly, and participate in the skills training that will complement the core physics skills that the mainstream training offered by the centre will provide. We are all relishing the chance to get down to work on an initiative which we strongly believe to be in the best interests of St Andrews, SUPA and the field of physics itself.”

First posted BDS 8.12.08