Queen Mary receives £25 million in funding to develop next generation of researchers

The four projects, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and Wellcome, span all areas of the University and cover topics ranging from healthcare and artificial intelligence to waste management, pollution and sustainable technology.

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the first of these DTPS will train the next generation of researchers to tackle the global waste crisis through interdisciplinary research and community collaboration. Queen Mary is one of just 10 UK universities selected to receive this £5 million grant from the Trust.

The DTP, entitled the Leverhulme Living with Waste Doctoral Programme: Rethinking Sustainable Consumption and Transformation, is led by Professor Kate Spencer and Dr Jeremy Schmidt. It will unite researchers across environmental science, materials science and engineering, geography, the arts and the social sciences, to rethink how waste is understood, managed and transformed. A distinctive feature of the programme will be the Waste School, an immersive interdisciplinary training model that will allow researchers to explore waste through multiple disciplinary perspectives while working alongside communities most affected by its impacts. The programme will fund up to 30 PhD students over nine years, including six ‘4+1’ scholarships designed to widen participation for students from under-represented groups.

The remaining three DTPs, funded by Wellcome, will recruit healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. While doing so, they will be supported by bespoke interdisciplinary training, mentoring and career development, helping build a fully rounded next generation of clinical academics. The over £20 million in funding will support around 50 PhD students, with the first cohort due to start in 2027, across the three DTPs which are:

• Health Advances in Underrepresented Populations and Diseases (HARP), led by Professor Will Alazawi and Professor Marta Korbonits, working in partnership with City St George's. This programme funding will build on Queen Mary’s established expertise in improving health outcomes for underrepresented populations and diseases that have historically received less research attention.
  
  
• Health and Environment Across the Life-course (HEAL), led by Professor Andrew Prendergast and Professor Isabelle Mareschal, aims to develop more effective and equitable approaches to improving health. It will do this by bringing together researchers from medicine, science, engineering, social sciences, arts and humanities to understand how environmental factors such as pollution, climate, housing and wider social conditions, shape people’s health throughout their lives.
• Enabling better use of digital tools and artificial intelligence approaches for better health, is a collaboration between Queen Mary, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (lead) and King’s College London. At Queen Mary the programme will be led by Professor Rohini Mathur, Professor Greg Slabaugh and Professor Venet Osmani. This programme will train healthcare professionals to bridge the gap between clinical practice and data science, helping ensure that artificial intelligence and digital technologies are developed and used safely, effectively and equitably to improve patient care.

Speaking on the funding success, Professor Colin Bailey CBE, President and Principal of Queen Mary said: “Queen Mary has a long, strong track record of developing the next generation of academic leaders. To have our excellence in this area further recognised with £25 million in funding from two prestigious, world-renowned institutions, is fantastic, and I would like to congratulate everyone involved in leading these programmes. I look forward to the first cohorts of doctoral trainees starting next year, and to seeing how they help transform the world around us and make a positive, lasting impact locally, nationally and internationally.”

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