Opportunity status:
Open
Funders:
Funding type:
Other
Publication date:
17 November 2025
Opening date:
17 November 2025 9:00am UK time
Closing date:
24 February 2026 4:00pm UK time
Apply for funding to deliver doctoral training in areas within the Medical Research Council (MRC)’s core remit and priorities. This funding opportunity will support the development of a highly skilled workforce equipped to address medical research and innovation challenges across a range of careers.
You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding.
We anticipate supporting up to approximately 200 notional studentships in total per year, initially for three annual intakes. The first cohort will start in October 2027.
We will fund 100% of the full economic cost (FEC).
This opportunity is open to organisations with standard eligibility. .
We strongly encourage applications from multi-organisation consortia which build on existing partnerships or seek to build new partnerships. You may apply as a single research organisation where you can demonstrate sufficient capacity and infrastructure to deliver high quality training across your proposed programme.
Project lead and project co-leads
Any organisation acting as a principal host for students during the award must apply as a project lead (PL), or project co-lead (PcL) if there are multiple hosts.
You should identify one organisation to act as the project lead if there are multiple hosts. We strongly encourage the project lead to be from a higher education PhD-awarding body. Where this is not the case for a justified reason, one must be present within your consortium.
An organisation may only act as the project lead on one application.
In general, organisations are not expected to be involved in more than one application, whether as a project lead or project co-lead. Exceptions will only be considered where there is a strong justification that a nationally distributed consortium is necessary to address a specific skills need, and that this is best delivered by organisations that are also essential to other bids. Any such exception must be discussed and agreed with MRC in advance of submitting an application.
Project partners
A project partner is a collaborating organisation in the UK or overseas, including partners based in the EU, who will have an integral role in the proposed doctoral training.
You may include project partners that will support your doctoral training through cash or in-kind contributions, such as:
* work experience or placements for students outside of academia
* training for students or programme staff
* access to facilities or equipment
* financial commitments to partially, or fully, fund additional studentships
Each project partner must provide a statement of support.
Organisations can act as a project partner if they are ineligible for UKRI funding or are eligible for UKRI funding but will not be acting as the principal host for any students. Any organisation included in your application core team cannot also be a project partner.
Organisations may act as a project partner on any number of applications.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
for all funding applicants. We encourage applications from a diverse range of researchers.
Applications will be assessed on their plans to support a diverse range of researchers and support people to work in a way that suits their personal circumstances. This includes:
* career breaks
* support for people with caring responsibilities
* flexible working
* alternative working patterns
for UKRI applicants and grant holders during the application and assessment process.
Scope
The people we nurture and support to become tomorrow’s leaders in discovery science are central to MRC’s mission to improve human health. A highly skilled research workforce, able to move flexibly between academia, clinical practice and industry, is essential to the UK’s continued leadership in medical research.
MRC’s continued support for doctoral training is central to delivering .
MRC doctoral landscape awards will deliver doctoral training across a broad range of research that directly aligns with of discovery and translational research to accelerate diagnosis, advance treatment and prevent human illness.
The overall objectives of MRC doctoral landscape awards are to:
* support the development of a highly skilled workforce equipped to address medical research and innovation challenges across a range of careers.
* advance current understanding and generate new knowledge.
* support a diverse doctoral community, which includes addressing areas of underrepresentation.
* enhance collaboration and knowledge exchange within and between academia and other sectors.
We anticipate supporting up to approximately 200 notional studentships in total per year, initially for three annual intakes. The first cohort will start in October 2027.
Funding for collaborative studentships (formerly iCASE) will be embedded within doctoral landscape awards.
This mode of doctoral training was formerly delivered through MRC doctoral training partnerships (DTPs).
Alignment with the UKRI core offer
The sets out the expectations for all UKRI studentships, including support and student experience, research skills and methods, and professional and career development. This information has been used to define the assessment criteria for this funding opportunity. See the section ‘How we will assess your application’ for further details. All applications must clearly state how the requirements outlined within the UKRI core offer will be delivered as part of their application.
Training requirements
The proposed doctoral training must directly align with and strategic priorities of discovery and translational research to deliver:
* early diagnosis: enabling intervention at the earliest opportunity
* advanced treatments: treating patients safely with precision
* precision prevention: understanding illness to protect and promote health
You should be able to demonstrate alignment of your training programme with your organisation’s scientific strategies and strengths. Your application must demonstrate a scientifically excellent training environment with sufficient high-quality research capacity and infrastructure to deliver training across all areas of the proposed programme. We encourage interdisciplinary doctoral training programmes.
You should identify specific UK skills gaps that your training programme aims to address and provide supporting evidence for this need in your application.
We expect all proposed programmes to provide training in the following cross-cutting skills:
* digital and data skills within medical sciences
* commercialisation and entrepreneurial skills
You must outline a coherent training programme which will support students to undertake their individual research projects alongside innovative cohort-level training. You must demonstrate processes for recruiting appropriate supervisors and developing and supporting them to maintain excellent standards of supervision. You should also describe your strategy for developing a cohort identity across the lifetime of your training programme, to ensure that students have opportunities to collaborate, exchange ideas and benefit from peer-to-peer support.
All students should have access to wider training opportunities to support all aspects of their professional development and career progression and to recognise and promote a diversity of careers. All students should be given the flexibility and support to undertake placement opportunities if they wish to do so.
You should be able to demonstrate plans to maintain links with graduates of your programme and use this network of alumni to track career pathways for the benefit of current and future student cohorts.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
Equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is a core feature of this funding opportunity. In line with UKRI’s principles on EDI, we want to work with our partners to shape a dynamic, diverse, and inclusive system of research and innovation that is an integral part of society.
You will need to explain how your EDI strategy will embed evidence-based EDI principles and practices at all levels and across all aspects of the doctoral landscape award, which includes:
* increasing PhD access, including recruitment
* working practices, including individualised student support
* supervision and supervisory teams
* wellbeing support, including mental health
* monitoring and evaluation, including a baseline and plans for improvement
We would expect your EDI strategy to describe how your doctoral programme is accessible to a diverse range of people and needs, and how you will be removing barriers to participation across your doctoral programme and associated processes. Your application should demonstrate how you will create and maintain a positive, inclusive, and supportive environment for all students and staff and what support systems will be in place to accommodate a diversity of needs.
You should refer to,, and .
The EDI strategies, activities and commitments stated by successful applicants will be regularly reviewed by MRC. These data will be collected on at least a yearly basis via annual reports and we will reserve the right to access these data if and when appropriate across the lifetime of the award. See the for more information.
Partnerships and governance
We strongly encourage applications from multi-organisation consortia which build on existing partnerships or seek to build new partnerships. You may apply as a single research organisation where you can demonstrate sufficient capacity and infrastructure to deliver high quality training across your proposed programme.
There are no requirements regarding the size or geographical spread of consortia. You must justify the structure and size of your consortium and demonstrate complementary strengths between members that will enable you to deliver across all areas of the proposed programme. Each member of the consortium must make meaningful contributions to the delivery of the doctoral landscape award and demonstrate that there is significant added value from their inclusion.
We encourage research organisations to collaborate with additional project partners to co-create and deliver student training. These might include industry, charities, and public sector organisations. Organisations hosting students for any period of time should have appropriate research environments to support students.
Partnerships must show a clear joint strategy for delivering their vision. You should describe the governance arrangements that will enable effective decision-making and engagement with all relevant stakeholders to deliver the training programme. In particular, you should be able to demonstrate approaches that ensure the design and delivery of the programme will be student-led.
You should describe in your application how administrative structures for your proposed programme will be managed and funded.
You should demonstrate a commitment to openly sharing best practice and outline how the programme will ensure best practice is shared among the partners and with other doctoral training programmes.
Collaborative studentships (formerly iCASE)
Collaborative studentships should be delivered with non-academic partners, with the aim of:
* providing students with experience of collaborative research in a non-academic setting
* strengthening and developing collaboration and partnerships between research organisations and non‐academic partner organisations
Collaborative studentships must meet the following requirements:
* non-academic partners must host the student for a minimum of three months during their PhD. This placement does not need to occur in one single continuous period
* non-academic partners must provide co-supervision
* non-academic partners must meet any costs incurred by the student when visiting and working within their establishment, including the cost of travel and accommodation as appropriate
* the host research organisation is responsible for agreeing any intellectual property arrangements with the non-academic partner, in line with the .
There is no longer an expectation that collaborative studentships receive a stipend supplement or additional project costs, nor that the non-academic partner contributes to such costs. However, non-academic partners are expected to make a significant contribution of no less than 20% and up to a maximum of 50% of the total notional studentship costs. Small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) are exempt from these contributions.
To be eligible to act as a collaborative studentship partner, non-academic organisations must demonstrate:
* they are not
* they can provide students with distinctive research training and experience not available in an academic setting
* if international, they can provide skills training that is not available at a UK-based partner
You should indicate the number of collaborative studentships you expect to support annually in your application and provide evidence that you have the administrative capacity and potential partnerships to support them. Award holders will have the flexibility to convert further studentships from within their notional allocation into collaborative studentships during the course of the award, if appropriate for the project, partners and student, and providing the requirements and eligibility criteria above are met.
In addition to collaborative studentships, opportunities to engage with non-academic partners should be available to all students, for example through training courses or networking events. You should outline any proposed opportunities in your application.
Funding available
We will support approximately 200 notional studentships in total per year, initially for three annual intakes (2027 to 2029), with the possibility of a further two intakes (2028 to 2029) following satisfactory review. The first cohort will start in October 2027.
A notional studentship consists of sufficient funds to meet the annual UKRI minimum stipend and fee levels, plus additional research and travel costs for four years of doctoral study. Awards will be supplemented with London allowance where eligible.
You should state the number of studentships that you intend to support per year, including the number of collaborative studentships, in the ‘Vision’ section of your application. The minimum cohort size that we will support is five students per year.
There is no upper limit to the number of studentships you may request, but you should consider the total number of studentships available through this funding opportunity and be able to demonstrate that you have a sufficient supervisory capacity within your partnership to deliver across all the areas of the proposed training programme.
In general, we expect the number of studentships requested to be in line with the scale and scientific breadth or your proposed consortium.
Successful applicants will have flexibility with their four-year notional studentship allocation to deliver different programme models if appropriately justified, for example 1+3. Shorter studentship durations may be offered in exceptional circumstances, where this is appropriate for the needs of individual students.
The indicative funding per four-year notional studentship, would total £136,898, including:
* stipend: £92,231
* fees: £23,467
* research training support grant (RTSG): £20,000
* travel and subsistence: £1,200
The student stipend and fees are estimates only, projected from the 2025 to 2026 UKRI minima, and excluding London allowance. At the time of award, stipend and fees will be indexed to accommodate rises in the minimum stipend and fees levels over the lifetime of the award.
You may also request up to £2,000 per studentship as a contribution towards administrative costs. This has been included in recognition of the need to manage the partnership. We acknowledge that this does not reflect the full cost of doctoral training programme administrative structures.
In line with the requirements in the partnerships section, adequate funds must therefore be committed by you from either flexibility within the training grant, leveraged support, or a combination of sources. You should outline these arrangements and any requested administrative funds, with justification, in the ‘Capability to deliver’ section of your application.
You may use funding to leverage additional investment (either as cash or in-kind support) from multiple stakeholders to support more than your allocation of notional studentships. However, there is no formal requirement for match-funded studentships or cash leverage for this funding opportunity. Students must be funded at least 50% by MRC to be classed as an MRC student.
Subject to spending review allocations, successful landscape awards will receive an additional to support unique training opportunities for MRC students, including:
* high-cost or exceptional training opportunities
* placements
* training in partnership with industry or at the interdisciplinary interface
* transitions from PhD
* cohort events with a defined training component
* equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) activities
All MRC funded students registered at project lead and project co-lead organisations within your consortium will be eligible to access the flexible supplement. These include MRC doctoral landscape award, DTP and collaborative students, MRC institute, unit, and centre students, MRC Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) students, and MRC clinical research training fellows (CRTFs).
Flexible supplement allocations will be proportional to the size of the total population of MRC funded students affiliated with each consortium. The total fund may vary from year to year and will be issued annually.
You should describe your processes to administer these funds to ensure maximum student benefit across the entire eligible student population. This should include your processes for maintaining oversight of all MRC students based at the organisations within your consortium.
Reporting requirements
Mandatory annual reports will request information including diversity statistics for doctoral candidate recruitment, collaborative partner engagement, training and development activities offered, examples of doctoral candidate achievements, and flexible supplement use.
Successful applicants will be expected to respond to requests for other monitoring activities as appropriate, for example visits by MRC staff.
You should describe your own approach to monitoring and evaluation and continuous improvement in your application, outlining your success measures and baselines.
Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)
UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
, including where applicants can find additional support.
Expression of interest
You must submit a mandatory expression of interest (EOI) prior to submitting a full application. Your EOI will not be part of the assessment process but we will use the information for planning purposes.
The survey to submit your EOI will open on 5 December 2025. You must submit your EOI by 8 January 2026.
.
We will request:
* details of the project lead
* a list of the research organisations you anticipate being part of your doctoral landscape award
We reserve the right to reject an application if an EOI is not submitted prior to a full application.
Full application
We are running this funding opportunity on the new UKRI Funding Service so please ensure that your organisation is registered. You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system.
The project lead is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service, but we expect all team members and project partners to contribute to the application.
Only the lead research organisation can submit an application to UKRI.
To apply
Select ‘Start application’ near the beginning of this Funding finder page.
1. Confirm you are the project lead.
2. Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password. If your organisation is not listed, email
Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service. We strongly suggest that if you are asking UKRI to add your organisation to the Funding Service to enable you to apply to this opportunity, you also create an organisation Administration Account. This will be needed to allow the acceptance and management of any grant that might be offered to you.
3. Answer questions directly in the text boxes. You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and assessment criteria are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.
4. Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.
5. Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.
6. Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.
Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant.
When including images, you must:
* provide a descriptive caption or legend for each image immediately underneath it in the text box (this must be outside the image and counts towards your word limit)
* insert each new image on a new line
* use files smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format
Images should only be used to convey important visual information that cannot easily be put into words. The following are not permitted, and your application may be rejected if you include:
* sentences or paragraphs of text
* tables
* excessive quantities of images
A few words are permitted where the image would lack clarity without the contextual words, such as a diagram, where text labels are required for an axis or graph column.
For more guidance on the Funding Service, see:
* * *
References
References should be included within the word count of the appropriate question section. You should use your discretion when including references and prioritise those most pertinent to the application.
Hyperlinks can be used in reference information. When including references, you should consider how your references will be viewed and used by the assessors, ensuring that:
* references are easily identifiable by the assessors
* references are formatted as appropriate to your research
* persistent identifiers are used where possible
General use of hyperlinks
Applications should be self-contained. You should only use hyperlinks to link directly to reference information. You must not include links to web resources to extend your application. Assessors are not required to access links to conduct assessment or recommend a funding decision.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI)
Use of generative AI tools to prepare funding applications is permitted, however, caution should be applied.
For more information see our policy on the .
Deadline
We must receive your application by 24 February 2026 at 4:00pm UK time.
You will not be able to apply after this time.
Make sure you are aware of and follow any internal institutional deadlines.
Following the submission of your application to the funding opportunity, your application cannot be changed, and applications will not be returned for amendment. If your application does not follow the guidance, it may be rejected.
Personal data
Processing personal data
MRC, as part of UKRI, will need to collect some personal information to manage your Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications.
We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read our .
Sensitive information
If you or a core team member need to tell us something you wish to remain confidential, email
Include in the subject line: [the funding opportunity title; sensitive information; your Funding Service application number].
Typical examples of confidential information include:
* individual is unavailable until a certain date (for example due to parental leave)
* declaration of interest
* additional information about eligibility to apply that would not be appropriately shared in the ‘Applicant and team capability’ section
* conflict of interest for UKRI to consider in reviewer or panel participant selection
* the application is an invited resubmission
For information about how UKRI handles personal data, read .
Publication of outcomes
MRC, as part of UKRI, will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at
If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the.
Summary
Word limit: 250
In plain English, provide a summary we can use to identify the most suitable experts to assess your application.
We usually make this summary publicly available on external-facing websites, therefore do not include any confidential or sensitive information. Make it suitable for a variety of readers, for example:
* opinion-formers
* policymakers
* the public
* the wider research community
Guidance for writing a summary
Clearly describe your proposed work in terms of:
* context
* aims and objectives
Core team
List the key members of your team and assign them roles from the following:
* project lead (PL)
* project co-lead (UK) (PcL)
* grant manager
Only list one individual as project lead. They should be from the administrative lead organisation. The project lead is responsible for setting up and completing the application process on the Funding Service. If you include more than one project lead your application will fail at the checking stage.
You can list multiple project co-leads. Any organisation which will host students in addition to the project lead organisation should list a project co-lead on the application.