The EastBio partnership has been awarded funding by UKRI BBSRC to continue providing world-class doctoral training across the life sciences in Scotland.

Major investment to support the next generation of researchers – UKRI

Since its inception in 2012, EastBio has worked collaboratively and transparently to award over 600 studentships and has delivered over 400 days of training across our research, professional and cohort-building strands. EastBio has now been awarded 19 BBSRC-funded studentships per year for a further five cohorts of PhD studentships. The successful EastBio co-funding model and investments from partner institutions means that approximately 38 studentships will be awarded each year, allowing us to continue to build upon the robust and innovative doctoral programme we developed since 2012. The first intake of this new grant cycle will start their research in October 2025.

This fantastic news means that EastBio will continue to effect significant contributions to research, industrial and societal challenges across Scotland, the UK and beyond. We will work tirelessly to equip our graduates with the skills, breadth of vision, values, and ambition that is necessary to help foster continued growth and advancement in line with young researchers’ professional aspirations and goals.

The continued funding support for EastBio recognises our partnership’s vision, encompassing capacity-building in all strategic areas of the BBSRC remit, intense multi-partner and stakeholder engagement, equitable recruitment, a focus on cohort-building and career preparedness, and a fair and empowering research culture. We are incredibly excited to expand our activities to cultivate opportunities for collaboration across partners and industry, further develop training opportunities in a collegial, co-creative and inclusive manner, and embed sustainability and EDI principles across our programme and governance model.

EastBio is a partnership of five universities, Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Stirling and St Andrews, plus the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC), Moredun Research Institute, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), The James Hutton Institute and associate partners Cool Farm Alliance and SULSA.