DTA - University of Bath

The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funds doctoral training through partnerships with universities, not through individual student grants. This funding model addresses a structural gap in how the UK trains its next generation of researchers. Rather than awarding separate grants to each PhD student, UKRI provides block funding to universities or consortia of research organisations. This allows institutions to design coherent training programmes, recruit cohorts of students, and allocate resources flexibly across disciplines. If this approach succeeds, it could produce a more adaptable and collaborative research workforce. Students trained within a partnership benefit from shared expertise, access to multiple facilities, and exposure to a broader range of scientific problems. The lead organisation shown on this portal is simply the administrative hub for a consortium that may include several universities and industrial partners. This project is fundamentally about infrastructure for training, not about a specific scientific discovery. It supports the pipeline that produces the people who will later make discoveries in fields from quantum computing to water treatment. Without such structured training partnerships, the UK risks losing the coordinated talent development needed to maintain its research competitiveness.