Exeter to award and host prestigious MRC Skills Development Fellowships

The prestigious three-year personal awards are designed to offer early career researchers, with a strong background in a quantitative discipline such as mathematics, statistics, computer science or physics, the opportunity to develop their skills with a focus on biomedical or clinical research.

They also present an opportunity for biomedical or clinical researchers at a later career stage who wish to transform their career by developing new quantitative skills.

Housing one of the largest groups of mathematical, statistical and computational scientists focussed on biomedical and clinical modelling in the UK, the University of Exeter provides an outstanding training environment for Skills Development Fellowship holders.

Fellows will be paired with a multi-disciplinary supervisory team, entered into a unique fellows mentoring programme and given a personal training budget.

As well as access to Exeter’s world-leading research facilities, the team will help identify a globally leading second research centre where fellowship holders can spend up to 12 months further developing their skills.

In Exeter, fellowship holders will be homed within the brand new £52.5M Living Systems Institute, a cross-disciplinary research institute that spans mathematics, computer science, physics, biosciences, biomedicine and clinical sciences. They will be embedded into two related Centres of excellence, the Centres for Predictive Modelling in Healthcare and Biomedical Modelling and Analysis, joining a team of over 40 researchers including 7 independent MRC Research Fellows, 15 postdoctoral researchers and 10 PhD students.

Fellows will also benefit from extensive recent investment in the University of Exeter Medical School, including the £27.5M Research, Innovation Learning and Development (RILD) building on the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust hospital site, which brings together clinical and biomedical scientists working in genomics, cell biology and human physiology in world-class facilities including single molecule real-time sequencing and high-performance computing.

Professor John Terry, who is leading the scheme at Exeter, said: “We are thrilled to be working with the MRC to award Skills Development Fellowships in the coming round.

“They are highly prestigious awards and we are excited to build on the exceptional environment we have established for developing quantitative scientists and turning them into outstanding interdisciplinary biomedical and clinical researchers.”

The application process is now open and interested applicants should visit the dedicated recruitment website for full details. The deadline for applications is 11 January 2018, with interviews scheduled for 14 February. Successful applicants will attend a unique research incubator event in March 2018 where they will finalise their plans with start dates possible shortly thereafter.

For further information please contact the Programme Manager Sarah Warren or visit the dedicated website.