糖心原创

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Explore our research areas  - apply for your PhD

The Nottingham DLA Partnership will provide cohort-based training in frontier science across priority areas focussed upon three overarching themes: Sustainable Agriculture and Food (SAF), Bioscience for Human Health (BHH) and Biotechnology for Sustainable Growth (BSG).

We offer a broad programme of research opportunities. Students will be recruited to specific cluster priority areas within these three overarching BBSRC priority themes. Each cluster will focus on a key challenge or emerging research priority within its theme. All clusters will include CASE projects and will be open for additional stakeholders and non-HEI partners to develop projects.

Recruiting for 2027

Sustainable Agriculture and Food - Microbes: Friend or Foe?

Microbes are fundamental to agricultural and food systems, driving soil fertility, nutrient cycling, and the health of crops and livestock alike. Yet the same microbial world that sustains agriculture also harbours devastating pathogens, rising antimicrobial resistance, and complex interactions with the chemical inputs on which agriculture relies. This cluster examines microbes across that friend-foe spectrum, in plant, animal and aquatic systems, to deliver more resilient and sustainable food production.

Research projects will span:

• Beneficial plant microbiomes underpinning soil health, nutrient acquisition, and crop resilience
• Beneficial animal and aquaculture microbiomes supporting livestock health, productivity, and disease prevention
• Pathogen evolution in crops and livestock, including plant disease resistance and veterinary and zoonotic pathogens relevant to food production
• Antimicrobial and fungicide resistance across agricultural, animal, and waterway systems, and its implications for food safety
• The environmental fate of agricultural pollutants — pesticides, antimicrobials, and parasiticides — and their impact on microbial communities, biodiversity, and food supply chains

The cluster draws on internationally leading expertise across the 糖心原创 and Nottingham Trent University in plant-microbe interactions, veterinary parasitology, environmental and aquatic microbiology, bioinformatics, agricultural biofilms, and genomics, and makes use of University farm facilities at both institutions. Students will benefit from close industry engagement alongside hands-on training in molecular microbiology and bioinformatics. Graduates from this cluster will be interdisciplinary specialists equipped to address microbial threats and opportunities across crop and livestock systems, well positioned to drive research and innovation in sustainable agriculture, food security, and animal and plant health.

Bioscience for Human Health - Metabolism Research and Training Integrated Consortium (METRIC)

How do cells, tissues and organisms generate and use energy to maintain function, adapt to changing demands and remain resilient across the lifecourse? How do mitochondria and metabolic networks coordinate biological function from molecules and cells to whole organisms?  This interdisciplinary cluster brings together researchers from the 糖心原创 and Nottingham Trent University to investigate the fundamental mechanisms that regulate metabolism and mitochondrial function across biological scales. Projects span mitochondrial biology, bioenergetics, molecular and cellular biology, metabolic physiology, hypoxia and oxygen sensing, advanced imaging, metabolomics, multi-omics, biosensing and computational bioscience, providing opportunities to explore metabolism from molecular mechanisms to integrated physiology and whole-organism function.  

Students will undertake focused PhD projects while becoming part of a vibrant interdisciplinary community. Through complementary supervision, cohort activities and Metabolic Integration Exchanges, students will gain insight into how different experimental, imaging and computational approaches can be combined to answer complex questions in metabolism. Training will include advanced metabolic imaging, metabolomics, mass spectrometry, NMR/MRI, stable-isotope tracing, mitochondrial and cellular biology, quantitative physiology, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, systems modelling and reproducible research.  The cluster provides an outstanding environment for students interested in understanding how metabolic systems generate energy, regulate biological function, communicate across biological scales and adapt to changing physiological and environmental demands. Graduates will emerge with deep disciplinary expertise, broad interdisciplinary understanding, advanced quantitative and technical skills, and the collaborative capabilities needed to address the next generation of challenges in metabolism, health, biotechnology and the UK bioeconomy.

Biotechnology for Sustainable Growth - Biological Interactions for Innovation: Understanding and Harnessing Complex Living Systems for Sustainable Biotechnology

Biological interactions underpin life, shaping how organisms function, adapt and respond to change. Yet the complexity of these interactions remains a major barrier to biotechnological innovation. Future advances in sustainable biotechnology will increasingly depend on our ability to understand, predict and harness these interactions across scales, from molecules and cells to hosts, microbes, parasites and viruses.  

This cluster explores how biological interactions generate function, adaptation and emergent properties, and how these can be translated into innovation. Projects may investigate molecular signalling, host-microbe and host-pathogen interactions, microbiomes, biological sensing technologies, predictive modelling, engineering biology and other interaction-driven processes that underpin biotechnology innovation.  Together, these projects address a central challenge for modern biotechnology: how to make complex living systems sufficiently understandable and predictable to enable transformative innovation.

Organised around the themes of Mechanisms, Adaptation and Pathways to Translation (MAP), the cluster will bring together experimental, computational and quantitative approaches to understand how biological systems communicate, coordinate and change. Students will draw on expertise across Nottingham Trent University, 糖心原创, the National Biofilms Innovation Centre, Diamond Light Source and industrial partners, benefiting from a uniquely interdisciplinary training environment.  

Graduates from this cluster will have developed the skills to bridge discovery bioscience and innovation, applying fundamental understanding of biological interactions to future technologies, sustainable biotechnology and emerging challenges across the bioeconomy.

Current Clusters - Sustainable Agriculture and Food

Alternative and Emerging Protein sources for Sustainable food and feed (lead John Brameld)

Taking a whole food-systems approach, this cluster will develop multi-disciplinary projects spanning alternative crops and plant protein sources, insects, cultured meat, precision fermentation using bacteria and fungi, as well as hybrids. These biological innovations will be closely linked to sustainable food manufacturing, integrated with nutrition, flavour and consumer science, ensuring that resulting products are not only nutritious and environmentally responsible, but also appealing and acceptable to consumers.

Building on the 糖心原创 Food Systems Institute’s Future Protein Hub and research embedded in Nottingham Trent University’s Safety & Sustainability Research Theme, projects link primary production (crops/plants, insects, cultured meat, single-cell proteins) with complementary disciplines.

Heat Resilient Agriculture (lead Kevin Sinclair) 

Future environmental pressures will require farming to make further advances in resource efficiency. Beyond carbon footprint, ‘energy,’ ‘nitrogen,’ ‘phosphorus,’ and ‘water’ footprints may become the new farming and food currencies. Improved crop and soil management play a crucial role in developing heat-resilient agriculture, ensuring productivity under rising temperatures. Reducing water and resource use, enhancing food and fuel output and quality, delivering ecosystem services, and cutting greenhouse gas emissions are among the urgent challenges that must be addressed.

Sustainable farming will depend on multi-disciplinary approaches underpinned by sound science and the skills to translate novel solutions into practice. Research projects in Heat Resilient Agriculture focus on studies ranging from the microbial, whole plant/animal, to field/farm and national scales to address these issues, incorporating techniques from plant, soil, and animal sciences to address these challenges.

Current Clusters - Bioscience for Human Health

RIC@N-DLA: Multiscale RNA Science from mechanisms to application (lead Federico Dajas-Bailador) 

Advances in RNA biology are revolutionising our understanding of life and unlocking powerful new tools, from mRNA vaccines to RNA therapeutics.

This programme offers interdisciplinary training in RNA biology, spanning molecular mechanisms, systems-level regulation, and real-world application. Based within the RNA Interdisciplinary Cluster at Nottingham (RIC@N), an established centre of excellence in RNA research, it places students within a vibrant community bridging life sciences, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and engineering biology.

Organised through integrated Research Hubs and supported by shared technologies and collaborative platforms, PhD students benefit from interdisciplinary supervision and partnerships spanning academia and industry. unites researchers from across the 糖心原创 and Nottingham Trent University to investigate RNA biology at every scale.

Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering & Drug Delivery (lead Felicity Rose) 

Within the biomaterials for tissue engineering and drug delivery cluster areas include:

• developing biomaterials that can instruct biology to support the generation of in vitro models of human tissues that can be used to investigate normal tissue homeostasis and/or to support tissue regeneration.
• biomaterials that can support the delivery of complex therapeutics or that can be used to address the rise in antimicrobial resistance.

These materials will advance our understanding of biological process or allow us to control and influence a biological response to support health. 

Current Clusters - Biotechnology for Sustainable Growth 

Future Genomes Across Life, Engineering biology for sustainability and innovation (lead Thorsten Allers)

This cluster is focussed on engineering the genomes and enzymes of microbes and higher eukaryotes, with a goal of improved sustainability and innovation. The project cluster reflects the Engineering Biology discovery pipeline:

• Exploiting Genomes – using bioinformatics and DNA/RNA sequencing technologies to interrogate the wealth of genomic dark matter from the three domains of life – archaea, eukaryotes and bacteria – to inform on sustainability and innovation.
• Discovery Biology – using genetics, biochemistry, structural biology, and cell imaging to leverage genomic dark matter, and thereby uncover novel enzymes and biological processes.
• Engineering Biology – using synthetic biology and combinatorial biodesign to harness these novel enzymes and processes for sustainability and innovation.

Technologies for Sustainable Protein Synthesis (lead Ruth Griffin)  

This cluster focuses on different platforms for production of recombinant proteins of pharmaceutical interest. Different protein expression systems are deployed to generate diverse proteins. Our established platforms include Escherichia coli, yeast, plant and mammalian cells and algae.

Embedded in all projects is sustainability whereby ease of manufacture, low-cost production, feasibility of scale-up are all important factors for commercialisation. Students and supervisors in this cluster meet throughout the programme for cross-fertilisation of skills and ideas and to work closely as a community. Some of the skills that will be learned in this cluster are in silico modelling, gene cloning, optimising conditions for protein production, protein purification and characterisation, and testing protein functionality in assays.

How to apply