Award Summary

100% UK Home fees covered. The studentship provides an enhanced stipend of £31,805 per year from 2026/2027, significantly above the standard UKRI doctoral stipend, as part of the UKRI TechExpert pilot programme.

Overview

The EngBio4Env doctoral training programme is designed to revolutionise how we tackle environmental challenges through engineering biology. Funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), and in collaboration with the UKRI Environmental Biotechnology Innovation Centre (EBIC), this programme will train the successful candidate to drive transformative environmental change.

This fully funded project will explore design principles for whole-cell biosensors to help create robust biosensing technologies for aquatic environments. Environmental pollution in aquatic ecosystems is highly dynamic. Most engineered biosensors for environmental monitoring are characterised under laboratory conditions and poorly reflect the complex dynamics of nature. This limits our ability to predict the performance of biosensors. Microfluidic platforms are ideal for simulating realistic environmental situations. Despite advances in microfluidics for environmental sensing, whole-cell implementations face signal delay and stability constraints. We will combine synthetic biology, microfluidics and computational modelling to address these key challenges. Building on our microfluidics set-up, we will develop engineered microbial biosensors targeting environmentally relevant pollutants.

The candidate will join a vibrant group of computational and biotechnology researchers at ICOS. Training in microfluidic device set-up and operation will be provided.

As part of EngBio4Env, the candidate will benefit from training and networking opportunities.