Warwick Interdisciplinary Biomedical Technologies (IBT) iCASE Programme

The MRC is funding a cohort of PhD students who will work at the intersection of biology, engineering, and physical sciences, developing new biomedical technologies through industry partnerships. This programme addresses a persistent gap in the UK’s research landscape: translating fundamental biological discoveries into practical medical devices, diagnostics, and therapies requires people who can speak the languages of both the lab bench and the factory floor. Traditional PhDs often produce specialists in a single discipline, leaving a shortage of researchers who can bridge biology with engineering, materials science, or data analytics. The Warwick Interdisciplinary Biomedical Technologies iCASE programme tackles this by embedding each student in a company for a significant portion of their training, ensuring their research tackles real-world industrial problems from day one. If successful, this programme will produce a pipeline of researchers who can accelerate the journey from a biological insight to a working prototype—whether that is a new sensor for detecting disease markers, a smarter biomaterial for implants, or a manufacturing process that makes a therapy cheaper to produce. The immediate output is skilled people, not a specific product, but those people will go on to shape the UK’s medical technology sector for decades.