College Futures Themes PhD Programme

Applications open

Fundamentals of Life PhD programme applications open for 2026

Applications are now CLOSED

Fundamentals of Life Projects

Temperature-Dependent Alternative Splicing of Circadian Genes: A Cross-Kingdom Study of Molecular Adaptation to Climate Change

Understanding the molecular mechanisms driving tissue dysfunction and inflammation in ageing

CD93 in metabolic disease and mental illness

Of microbes and metals: Discovery and characterization of de novo metal resistance peptides in bacteria

Mapping Value and Motivational Salience in Addiction with Multimodal Brain Imaging

The structural and molecular basis of substrate specificity of the thioesterases APT1 and APT2

Mitochondrial defects as a mechanism of cerebral small vessel disease

Mitochondrial metal uptake in Toxoplasma gondii and its role in metabolism

Seeing the big picture: the function of top-down signals in the visual system

Investigating the link between dopamine and the neurocomputational mechanisms of auditory verbal hallucinations

Advanced Spectroscopy and Machine Learning for Classifying Complex Phenotypes

From Force to Fate: LINCing Cellular Junctions and Cytokeleton to Nuclear Mechanotransduction

Improvement of the resilience of Brassica crops to the changing climate through UV-B priming

Ageing, stress, and specialisation: mechanism and function of gut tissue regionalisation in Drosophila

Investigating epigenetic mechanisms of stem cell-mediated intestinal repair in health and disease

Molecular degraders for respiratory virus infection

Developing bio-inspired computational model of Theory of Mind by quantifying human social behaviours with VR

Fundamental Mechanisms of Reproduction: Viviparity in an Evolutionary Context

Neural underpinnings of 3D cognitive mapping

Understanding speech comprehension by grounding cortical responses in subcortical processing

AI-Driven Discovery of Virus–Host Molecular Interactions