The University of Bristol is delighted to work in partnership with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to offer a wide range of research opportunities to Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers. The Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) award for 2016-17 and 2017-18 will be used strategically to support students in fields aligned with EPSRC Research Areas. These include: Materials Characterisation and Materials Technologies, Synthetic Biology; Photonic Materials, Energy Generation Transformation and Storage, Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Statistics and Applied Probability, Quantum Information Computing and Technology, Digital Signal Processing, Communications, Robotics, and Big Data. Some examples of the research opportunities can be found on our websites: www.bristol.ac.uk/science/ and www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/. Many of these opportunities will be in Interdisciplinary and RCUK Grand Challenge areas, tackling problems with significant impact for society. The EPSRC DTP award will allow us to populate and support these emergent interfaces, complementing the more specific EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training. The University Research Institutes, such as the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute at the (interface of health, science and engineering) (www.bristol.ac.uk/blackwell/), and the Cabot Institute (global environmental change) (www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/), will also help to maximize impact.
The University of Bristol will utilise the full range of DTP options to support primarily postgraduates, and also undergraduates and early career researchers. We will support a number of talented undergraduates with Vacation Bursaries, in the knowledge that these students are then very well-prepared for creative, efficient research. The principal component of the DTP award will be used for PhD Studentships, to attract a diverse range of the very best students from the UK and from Overseas, using the capability of International Doctoral Scholarships. Strategically, we will also use the EPSRC Doctoral Prize to enable just-graduated PhD students to translate their research to high-impact outputs. This will dramatically enhance the quality of the postgraduate environment. We will maximize the value of the DTP by working with external partners, and via the Industrial CASE and CASE conversion schemes.
The University of Bristol is committed to recruiting and training the highest quality researchers and postgraduate students. To underpin their research, the students will benefit from a Training Environment that is designed to enhance their future employability. The Bristol Doctoral College (BDC) (www.bristol.ac.uk/doctoral-college/) leads the central doctoral training activity and researcher development across the University, with an oversight of the whole postgraduate research domain and the support of DTP-funded students. More than 160 different training courses are coordinated, and the online STaR system (www.bristol.ac.uk/doctoral-college/star/) will allow each DTP student to plan and track their personal and professional development (referenced to the Vitae Researcher Development Framework), maintain an active log of interactions with supervisors, set and share objectives and goals, and book training courses and activities.
The University of Bristol will manage and optimise value and impact from the EPSRC DTP via a "DTP Working Group". The Working Group will administer 3 strands of DTP funding: the Doctoral Prize, the Core Strategic Allocation (Studentships, International Scholarships, and Vacation Bursaries) and the Future Opportunities Allocation (Studentships specifically targeted to emerging opportunities). The Working Group will meet 4 times a year: it will inform prospective supervisors of allocation in the autumn, and it will organise directed advertising of the opportunities to potential students, in order to attract the best students to take up the DTP award.
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