£2.85m National PhD Training Programme in AMR

Antibiotics transformed healthcare in the 20th century and are still considered one of greatest medical achievements of the era. Today, we still rely on antibiotics to treat everything from minor cuts to life-threatening bacterial infections and to prevent infection after surgery. These drugs have drastically improved our quality of life and increased lifespan.

In the 21st Century, antibiotic overuse and misuse has led to antibiotics rapidly becoming ineffective. Antimicrobial resistance, specifically antibiotic resistance, now poses a global threat to human life. We need urgent action to halt resistance and to accelerate new treatments for bacterial infection. The Antimicrobial Resistance PhD Training Programme has been designed in response.

Working with the Medical Research Council, the Foundation spotted a gap in funding for PhD studentships in antimicrobial resistance research – right now there are few emerging researchers trained in the multidisciplinary approach required to tackle the antimicrobial resistance problem. The Medical Research Foundation's PhD Training Programme is designed to help build a strong, active network of new researchers to approach this global challenge in innovative ways.

The Medical Research Foundation will continue to raise money with the aim of funding two further cohorts of antimicrobial resistance PhD students in the future.

For more information about the Training Programme in AMR please contact:

020 4581 2402 or email research@medicalresearchfoundation.org.uk

For more information on how you can donate to future PhD studentships as part of this Training programme, please contact:

020 4581 2404 or email fundraising@medicalresearchfoundation.org.uk

Background to the Antimicrobial Resistance PhD Training Programme

The Medical Research Foundation is delighted to be funding the only national PhD Training Programme in Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in the UK.

The National Training Programme will initially support 18 fully funded, multidisciplinary PhD studentships to be hosted across the UK. It will also provide a number of training and network-building activities and events including on-line training resources, summer residential training weeks, annual AMR conferences and tailored meetings responsive to developments and opportunities relevant to the AMR field. These training and network-building activities will reach a further 150 UK PhD students training in AMR-related research.

The Medical Research Foundation is providing £2.85m to fund the national PhD Training Programme in AMR.

The Medical Research Foundation’s National PhD Training Programme in AMR will consist of a 4-year training programme per cohort of students

The following universities and institutes are hosting Medical Research Foundation PhD Students as part of our National PhD Training Programme in AMR:

• University of Bristol
• University of Warwick
• University of Cambridge
• University of Edinburgh
• University of Leeds
• University of Sheffield
• University of Oxford
• University of Nottingham
• NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
• London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
• University of Exeter
• University of Dundee
• University College London
• Imperial College London
• Nuffield Department of Medicine, Oxford