Our research areas

PhD student working in a greenhouse

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.

Cluster Leads & Theme
  
 Heat Resilient Agriculture (SAF) Lead: Kevin Sinclair & Deputy: Nicholas Girkin
 Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering & Drug Delivery (BHH) Lead: Felicity Rose & Deputy: Craig Doig
Technologies for Sustainable Protein Synthesis (BSG) Lead: Ruth Griffin & Ivan Campeotto

 

Sustainable Agriculture and Food - Heat Resilient Agriculture 

Currently over one billion individuals suffer from chronic malnourishment, while nearly 200 million children are severely underweight. Future environmental pressures will require farming to achieve further advances in resource use. Alongside carbon footprint, ‘energy’, ‘nitrogen’, ‘phosphorus’ and ‘water’ footprints may well become the new farming and food currencies. 

Sustainable farming will rely upon multi-disciplinary approaches underpinned by sound science and the skills to translate novel solutions into practice. Reducing water and resource use, enhancing food and fuel output and quality, delivering ecosystem services and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are some of the pressing issues that will need to be tackled. Sensory science, brewing science/fermentation projects are also included in this research area. Research projects in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security will focus on studies at the molecular, cellular, whole organism, and population levels to address these issues

 

Bioscience for Human Health - Biomaterials for Tissue Engineering & Drug Delivery

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. Example of a project that fits within this these is the CASE project - novel self-oxygenating and cell-instructive materials for chronic wound healing.

 

Biotechnology for Sustainable Growth - Technologies for Sustainable Protein Synthesis 

This cluster focuses on different platforms for production of recombinant proteins of industrial interest. Each PhD project will deploy a different protein expression platform to generate diverse proteins. Our established platforms include Escherichia coli, yeast, plant and mammalian cells and algae. Some examples of types of proteins of major industrial interest today that will be the focus of some of the projects are protein or peptide delivery systems, antigens and antibodies. 

Embedded in all these 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 will meet throughout the programme for cross-fertilisation of skills and ideas and to work closely as a community. Some of the common 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, for example activities in in vitro and ex vivo models.

Applied project areas will focus on the production and testing of:

  • protein delivery systems to carry antigens to target immune factories of the gut to develop vaccines against infectious diseases and colorectal cancer
  • single domain antibodies as therapies against veterinary viruses
  • virus like particle (VLP) vaccine delivery systems to target viruses
  • edible vaccines: algae delivery systems to target infectious diseases 

Fundamental project areas will focus on sustainability and will include technology development for:

  • improved protein yield and purification
  • stability and storage to avoid cold chain

Students will graduate with a rounded, diverse skill set sought after by employers in the biotech sector in both industry and academia.

 

How to apply

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Doctoral Training Programme

The University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

Tel: +44 (0) 115 8466946
Email: bbdtp@nottingham.ac.uk