Editorial: Postgraduate boost

25 January 2008

The Wellcome Trust attaches particular importance to the provision of personal support for the brightest scientists with the best ideas, and for many years has invested substantially in both training and career support.

We have recently given our postgraduate biomedical research training programmes a significant boost, with a £137 million investment over nine years for four-year PhD programmes for basic biomedical scientists and PhD programmes for clinicians.

The Four-year PhD Studentship Programmes for basic scientists provide students with the fantastic opportunity of working in their first year in a range of laboratories and with a variety of supervisors. This enables the PhD students to develop a broad experience of the research process and to build a support network of their peers. In the short term, this first-year rotation allows students to make an informed choice about the research area they will study in the subsequent three years and the supervisor they work best with. But the rotation also has longer-term benefits: it helps students to build collaborative links and to develop ideas for interdisciplinary research.

There is also a considerable need to strengthen clinical academic training in the UK and to develop innovative approaches to support the academic training of young clinicians. We have long recognised the benefits that a programmatic approach has brought to the PhD training of basic scientists we fund, and this has informed the development of complementary programmes tailored to the unique needs of the clinician-scientists.

I am delighted that, early this year, we are launching these newly developed three-year PhD programmes for clinical scientists. The programmes will provide the clinical trainees with structured, well-mentored environments that will enable them to access high-quality research environments that might not have otherwise been available to them.

Mark Walport

Director of the Wellcome Trust