PhD Opportunities in Synthetic Biology in United Kingdom

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...

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...

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...

PhD position available at Imperial College London in the group of Francesca Ceroni together with Tom Ellis on design of synthetic chromosomes for improved cell engineering . This opportunity is aimed at home students . The project sits at the intersection of synthetic biology , biology , biomedical engineering , and chemical engineering , with a focus on engineering chromosomes to improve cellular function and performance. No detailed funding package, stipend amount, or deadline is stated in the...

[4-year Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership PhD DTP studentship; includes tuition fees paid directly to the University, a stipend of £21,805 for 2026/27, and a Research Training Support Grant of £5,000 per year.] PhD Studentship: Engineering Fitness in Disease-Resistant Crops at the University of East Anglia . This PhD studentship explores a major challenge in agricultural biotechnology: how to engineer crop disease resistance without compromising plant growth and yie...