Will climate change worsen the problem of antibiotic resistance? MRC GW4 BioMed DTP PhD studentship for 2026/27 Entry, Department of Ecology and Conservation (Penryn) Ref: 5622

Supervisors

Lead Supervisor:  Dr Daniel Padfield - University of Exeter - Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy

Co-Supervisors:

Dr Anne Leonard - University of Exeter - Faculty of Health and Life Sciences

Professor Ed Feil - University of Bath

The GW4 BioMed2 MRC DTP is offering up to 17 funded studentships across a range of biomedical disciplines, with a start date of October 2026.

These four-year studentships provide funding for fees and stipend at the rate set by the UK Research Councils, as well as other research training and support costs, and are available to UK and International students.

About the GW4 BioMed2 Doctoral Training Partnership

The partnership brings together the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff (lead) and Exeter to develop the next generation of biomedical researchers. Students will have access to the combined research strengths, training expertise and resources of the four research-intensive universities, with opportunities to participate in interdisciplinary and 'team science'. The DTP already has over 90 studentships over 6 cohorts in its first phase, along with 80 students over 4 cohorts in its second phase.

The 122 projects available for application, are aligned to the following themes;

• Infection, Immunity, Antimicrobial Resistance and Repair

• Neuroscience and Mental Health

• Population Health Sciences

Applications open on 1 September 2025 and close at 5.00pm on 20th October 2025.

Please note that we may close the application process before the stated deadline if an unprecedented number of applications are received– check our website for details.

Studentships will be 4 years full time. Part time study may also be available.

Project Information

Research Theme:  Infection, Immunity & Antimicrobial Repair

Summary:

Recent studies have shown that levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) increase at higher environmental temperatures, but we have limited understanding of the mechanisms causing this pattern. To improve our ability to control AMR, we need to expand our knowledge of the mechanisms through which temperature alters the selection and spread of AMR. This project will combine lab-based experiments, theory, and genome sequencing to achieve this. 

Description:

The evolution and spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are major threats to global health. Recent correlational studies have shown that levels of AMR increase at higher temperatures in environmental and pathogenic bacteria. However, an almost complete lack of empirical evidence to explain the mechanisms of these broad scale-patterns limits our ability to quantify, understand, and ultimately control potential synergistic impacts of climate change and AMR.

One of the major ways AMR spreads is through horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which allows bacteria to acquire DNA from individuals other than their immediate ancestors and is driven by mobile genetic elements, such as plasmids. This project’s key research question is whether the spread of plasmids increases at higher temperatures. If this is the case, then climate change may increase environmental reservoirs of AMR that can then spread into clinically relevant bacteria.

Below we suggest four different components of this project, but we will encourage any PhD student to lead the design of their own project to align closest to their interests. The project can take advantage of available libraries of >3000 well-characterised isolates of Klebsiella spp. isolates collected from the environment and from humans. These isolates cover 15 species, including the human pathogen K. pneumoniae, have variation in resistance profiles, and have high quality genomes from previous work. This gives us an unprecedented study system to understand how temperature alters plasmid transfer and persistence of AMR across a diverse set of closely-related isolates, including many opportunistic pathogens.

Objectives

1.  Explore variation in the response of environmental and clinical Klebsiella spp. to temperature.

Theory predicts that clinical Klebsiella spp. should have higher optimal temperatures and a narrower tolerance range than environmental Klebsiella spp..

2.  Understand how plasmid transfer rate changes across temperatures in environmental and clinical Klebsiella spp..

Plasmid transfer rate is linked to the growth rates of the donor and recipient bacteria. We therefore expect plasmid transfer across Klebsiella spp. to be highest close to their optimal temperatures.

3.  Understand how selection for resistance changes across temperatures We will quantify the cost of plasmid carriage and the impact of environmentally-relevant antibiotic concentrations on susceptible

Klebsiella spp. across their full temperature range to understand how the selection for resistance changes with warming.

4. Understand how plasmid spread and dynamics of Klebsiella spp. change across temperatures in natural sewage communities

We will use sequencing to test whether plasmids spread more at higher environmental temperatures in natural communities, and investigate whether clinical Klebsiella spp. dominate Klebsiella spp. diversity in a warmer world.

The successful candidate will be primarily based in the lab of Dr Daniel Padfield at Exeter’s Cornwall campus, who is a NERC Independent Research Fellow with an inclusive and expanding team working on microbial ecology and evolution, AMR, and climate change, as well as a passion for open and reproducible science. The project will include a large wet lab component to collect high resolution, large datasets to fill current knowledge gaps.

This interdisciplinary project will combine experiments, sequencing, and mathematical modelling to increase our mechanistic understanding of how temperature alters the selection and spread of antibiotic resistance in the Klebsiella group. The experimental work will be supervised by Padfield, Leonard, and Buckling and will approaches well developed from previous work, such as phenotypic assays to measure growth and plasmid transfer across temperatures, fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry, qPCR, and metagenomic sequencing. Bioinformatics training will be provided by Padfield and Feil. This work will be complemented by statistical and mathematical modelling to generate testable predictions, guidance and training for which will be provided by Padfield and Kuijper. Depending on the student’s interests, there are opportunities to do long- term experimental evolution to understand how warming impacts AMR resistance evolution, mine existing metagenomic datasets to test questions about temperature, plasmids, and AMR, and use results from experiments to inform risk models for human exposure to opportunistic pathogens and AMR.

Funding

This studentship is funded through GW4BioMed2 MRC Doctoral Training Partnership. It consists of UK tuition fees, as well as a Doctoral Stipend matching UK Research Council National Minimum (£20.20780 p.a. for 2025/26, updated each year).

Additional research training and support funding of up to £5,000 per annum is also available.

Eligibility

Residency:

The GW4 BioMed2 MRC DTP studentships are available to UK and International applicants. Following Brexit, the UKRI now classifies EU students as international unless they have rights under the EU Settlement Scheme. The GW4 partners have agreed to cover the difference in costs between home and international tuition fees. This means that international candidates will not be expected to cover this cost and will be fully funded but need to be aware that they will be required to cover the cost of their student visa, healthcare surcharge and other costs of moving to the UK to do a PhD.  All studentships will be competitively awarded and there is a limit to the number of International students that we can accept into our programme (up to 30% cap across our partners per annum).

Academic criteria:

Applicants for a studentship must have obtained, or be about to obtain, a first or upper second-class UK honours degree, or the equivalent qualification gained outside the UK, in an appropriate area of medical sciences, computing, mathematics or the physical sciences.  Applicants with a lower second class will only be considered if they also have a Master’s degree. Please check the entry requirements of the home institution for each project of interest before completing an application. Academic qualifications are considered alongside significant relevant non-academic experience.

English requirements:

If English is not your first language you will need to meet the English language requirements for the University of Exeter by the start of the programme. Please refer to the details in the following web page for further information https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/englishlanguagerequirements/

Please check the relevant English Language requirements of the university that will host the PhD project.  

Data Protection

If you are applying for a place on a collaborative programme of doctoral training provided by Cardiff University and other universities, research organisations and/or partners please be aware that your personal data will be used and disclosed for the purposes set out below.

Your personal data will always be processed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations of 2018. Cardiff University (“University”) will remain a data controller for the personal data it holds, and other universities, research organisations and/or partners (“HEIs”) may also become data controllers for the relevant personal data they receive as a result of their participation in the collaborative programme of doctoral training (“Programme”).

Further Information

For an overview of the MRC GW4 BioMed programme please see the website www.gw4biomed.ac.uk

Entry requirements

Academic Requirements

Applicants for a studentship must have obtained, or be about to obtain, a first or upper second-class UK honours degree, or the equivalent qualification gained outside the UK, in an appropriate area of medical sciences, computing, mathematics or the physical sciences. Applicants with a lower second class will only be considered if they also have a Master’s degree. Please check the entry requirements of the home institution for each project of interest before completing an application. Academic qualifications are considered alongside significant relevant non-academic experience.

English Language Requirements

If English is not your first language you will need to meet the English language requirements for the University of Exeter by the start of the programme. Please refer to the relevant university website for further information.  This will be at least 6.5 in IELTS or an acceptable equivalent.  Please refer to the English Language requirements web page for further information.

Please check the relevant English Language requirements of the university that will host the PhD project. 

How to apply

A list of all the projects and how to apply is available on the DTP’s website at gw4biomed.ac.uk.  You may apply for up to 2 projects and submit one application per candidate only.

Please complete an application to the GW4 BioMed2 MRC DTP for an ‘offer of funding’.  If successful, you will also need to make an application for an 'offer to study' to your chosen institution.

Please complete the online application form linked from our website by 5.00pm on Monday, 20th October 2025.  Please note that we may close the application process before the stated deadline if an unprecedented number of applications are received– check the DTP’s website for details and updates

If you are shortlisted for interview, you will be notified from Tuesday, 23rd December 2025.  Interviews will be held virtually on 27th and 28th January 2026.  

Further Information

For informal enquiries, please contact GW4BioMed@cardiff.ac.uk

For project related queries, please contact the respective supervisors listed on the project descriptions on our website.

Summary