PhD Opportunities in Synthetic Biology

The University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom, is offering a full-time PhD studentship in machine learning-guided engineering of next-generation cancer therapeutics, starting 1 October 2027. Supervised by Dr Amit Sachdeva, the interdisciplinary project will develop small antibody fragments designed to penetrate solid tumours more effectively than conventional full-length antibodies. The research combines machine learning-guided protein design with experimental chemical biology, synthe...

Max Planck School Matter to Life in Germany is offering a fully funded, integrated five-year MSc/PhD programme for students interested in chemistry and interdisciplinary molecular sciences. The two-year Master’s phase takes place at Heidelberg University or the University of Göttingen and covers chemistry, molecular systems, synthetic chemistry, biophysics, biomaterials, synthetic biology, complex systems, and the chemistry of living systems. Students then progress to a three-year PhD research p...

The University of Oxford is offering a 3.5-year DPhil studentship in Control and Engineering Biology on the project “Learning and controlling cellular dynamics.” The research sits at the intersection of engineering, biology, control theory and machine learning. Potential directions include developing mathematical and computational models of cellular behaviour, designing feedback-control strategies, and building experimental tools using microfluidics, automated microscopy and light-controlled gen...

[4-year Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership PhD studentship with tuition fees paid, a stipend of £21,805 per year (2026/27 rate), and a Research Training Support Grant of £5,000 per year.] PhD opportunity at the University of East Anglia and the Earlham Institute on Designing Plant Gene Expression with Explainable AI . This studentship sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, plant genomics, and engineering biology, asking whether explainable AI can discov...

[Fully funded 4-year Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership PhD studentship including tuition fees, an annual stipend of £21,805 (2026/27 rate), and a Research Training Support Grant of £5,000 per year.] PhD studentship at the University of East Anglia in the Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Programme (NRPDTP): Rewiring Photosynthetic Pathways in a Purple Bacterium . This fully funded 4-year PhD project focuses on engineering the purple phototrophic ba...

Fully funded PhD opportunity in the University of Bath / University of Bristol (Bristol Vet School) partnership, starting in September 2027 through the SWBio DTP Hub Doctoral Training Partnership . The project is titled Using engineering biology to modulate toxin-antitoxin dynamics and the stability of multidrug resistance in important foodborne pathogens (Project 3659). This studentship sits at the intersection of engineering biology , synthetic biology , molecular biology , microbiology , and ...

PhD opportunity at the University of Bath in the Faculty of Science , starting September 2027 . This interdisciplinary project sits at the interface of artificial intelligence , protein engineering , enzymology , and structural biology . The research will investigate why closely related enzymes in the same family act either as peptidases (peptide-cutting proteases) or ligases (peptide-joining enzymes). The project combines AI-driven protein analysis , directed enzyme evolution , biochemical char...

We are inviting applications for a fully funded PhD position in an interdisciplinary joint programme between Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and IISER Tirupati . The project focuses on the direct selection of RNA-based fluorescent light-up aptamer (FLAP) biosensors using microfluidics to detect and study metabolite dynamics in live cells . This opportunity is especially relevant for students interested in Chemical Biology , Organic Chemistry , Synthetic Biology , RNA Biology , ...

Joshua Lawrence is starting a new group at the University of Warwick School of Life Sciences next September and is advertising two funded PhD opportunities . The lab will be interdisciplinary, combining synthetic biology , electrochemistry , and biophysical methods to map the bioenergetic pathways of microorganisms and engineer them for sustainable biotechnologies. The projects are collaborative with Julie Macpherson and Joseph Beckwith in the Department of Chemistry . Funding is through the Mid...