Research students

We have a thriving postgraduate research student community with over 1200 students working across a huge variety of disciplines. Many of these are completing a PhD to develop specialist knowledge and transferrable skills.

Our research students form an important element of our overall research capacity. As highly qualified individuals with an in-depth knowledge of their discipline, they have the breadth of vision and flexibility to apply their expertise to address important research questions and workplace challenges.

There are a number of ways for business to get involved with research students.

Collaborative Doctoral Awards (CASE)

The UK has a number of government-funded Research Councils that offer funding to PhD students. The Councils are keen to encourage partnerships with business and their Collaborative Doctoral Awards (also known as CASE) facilitate projects that are relevant to both the collaborative partner and to academic theory. Students are therefore able to undertake applied research that is also beneficial to business.

Depending on the scheme, students have 3 to 4 years to complete their PhD with between 3 and 18 months of this is spent on placement with the collaborative partner. This allows cutting edge research to be incorporated into commercial processes and systems. The awards are effective in building relationships between students, academic supervisors and businesses and often result in long term strategic partnerships.

The Research Councils provide students with an average £20,000 per annum to cover fees and living costs. The collaborative partner must contribute an additional £1000 - £7000 per annum to the studentship, depending on the scheme.

Industry-Related Research

Many of the research questions being considered within PhD projects have significance and implications for industry. We therefore welcome industry coming forward with ideas for research projects and are keen to engage in jointly funded and jointly supervised projects where this can enhance the student experience.

In addition, industry can in some cases offer facilities and resources to further research in specific areas and we promote use of these to students where available. We also encourage students to liaise and network with professional experts to help them further their understanding of the field.

Sponsorship

We are committed to providing study opportunities for the brightest research students and works with industry to maximise the funding available. Industry funding can range from a full studentship, which covers fees and living costs, to smaller bursaries, which offer students a contribution towards their study or living costs.

Individual students can be sponsored on a part-time of full-time basis and it will normally be for a project in an area which the sponsoring company has an interest it. It may be that an organisation funds one of its own employees to undertake research, as a means of meeting business requirements and up skilling its workforce.

You can find out more about the opportunities for postgraduate research and areas of research expertise at the University of Exeter by visiting our postgraduate study web pages.

Contact

Should you wish to discuss the opportunities for working with research students, please contact:

Lucy Ryder
Phone: +44 (0) 1392 726207
Lucy.Ryder@exeter.ac.uk