Doctoral Training Centre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Doctoral Training Centres are a recent phenomenon in UK postgraduate education, which aim to produce interdisciplinary PhD students whose research spans multiple disciplines - something harder to achieve within more traditional University departments.

Research in the life sciences has radically changed since the sequencing of the human and other plant and animal genomes. It has led to a growing demand for scientists who are both competent in the mathematical and statistical tools necessary to analyse genomic and systems data as well as a good practical understanding of 'wet' science. It is to this end that doctoral training centres were created.

Another thing which is distinctive about doctoral training centres is their emphasis on transferrable skills training which is far greater than the traditional UK PhD programmes. They run a number of courses, both as individual institutions and in collaboration, focussing on communication, networking and team working.

For example, the Life Sciences Interface Doctoral Training Centre or LSI DTC is an interdisciplinary programme at the University of Oxford, directed by Professor David Gavaghan. It is jointly funded by the EPSRC and MRC and aims to train students from both physical and mathematical backgrounds, as well as those from the life sciences, interested in the more theoretical aspects of their disciplines to interface with biological sciences. Its main application areas are Bioinformatics, Bionanotechnology, Medical Imaging, and Computational Biology.

The MOAC (Molecular Organisation and Assembly in Cells) DTC at the University of Warwick, directed by Professor Alison Rodger, is housed in a specialist building adjacent to the Warwick Systems Biology Centre. Students are involved in diverse research areas such as gene networks, biophysical techniques, computational protein folding, fibrous proteins, and disordered proteins. MOAC closely collaborates with the Systems Biology and Complexity DTCs also at Warwick.