Industrial CASE Account - University of East Anglia 2024

The University of East Anglia is recruiting and training PhD students through an Industrial CASE Account, a programme that embeds doctoral researchers within partner companies to work on industry-defined problems. This matters because the UK faces a persistent gap between academic research and commercial application. Many PhD graduates emerge from universities with deep fundamental knowledge but limited experience of how that knowledge translates into products, processes, or services. Industrial CASE studentships close that gap by requiring each student to spend at least half their time working directly with a company, tackling a research question the business has identified as strategically important. The students are jointly supervised by university academics and company scientists. If this succeeds, the UK gains a pipeline of researchers who can move fluently between academic discovery and industrial innovation. The companies involved get early access to cutting-edge research and the chance to shape it toward commercial needs. The students themselves emerge with dual expertise: rigorous scientific training plus hands-on experience of how research drives economic value. Over time, this model strengthens the UK’s capacity to turn fundamental science into real-world technologies, products, and jobs.