Supervision & Research Teams

Your supervisory team comprises two or more Unit members who are very often among the leading researchers in their fields. In addition to supervisory team meetings, most of our students interact with their supervisors and other postdoctoral team members on a day-to-day basis. Students are considered as full members of their supervisor’s research team and contribute to all of their research team’s scientific activities.

Research Topic

Students are very welcome to formulate a PhD topic of their own choice, as long as it is coherent with the overall goal of the Unit, and with the interests of at least one Unit programme. Alternatively, students may choose from one of the current highlighted projects. More commonly, we work with our students to match their specific projects to their interests, as long as they are coherent with the wider aims of the Unit.

Students benefit from our wide range of in-house large-scale population studies, access to external datasets and our involvement in many international study consortia. For topics that require generation of new data or establishment of new studies, students benefit from expert support from our Research Support Teams and expertise in study design and lifestyle behaviour measurements.

Research Training

We place great emphasis on Researcher Development. All students are expected to present their research work at both internal and external meetings, and the vast majority of our students submit work for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals during the course of their studies. We also strongly encourage all of our students to actively engage with the high-class training courses in transferable skills provided by the University of Cambridge’s Researcher Development programme.

Stipend

For UKRI (e.g. MRC, BBSRC, ESRC, EPSRC) and other scholarship funded students, we supplement the National Minimum Doctoral Stipend using departmental funds. From October 2023, we will pay UKRI and other scholarship funded students an annual tax-free stipend of £21,122.