Medical research in Bristol has received a major boost thanks to funding worth over £2 million from one of Britain’s most important biomedical research organisations, the Medical Research Council (MRC).

Bristol University submitted three separate bids to the MRC’s national competition and all three were successful. Altogether, the funding will support 26 MRC Capacity Building PhD Studentships, equating to £2.16 million. This represents approximately 20 per cent of the total number of studentships awarded nationwide and is testament to the outstanding postgraduate training environment provided at Bristol.

The studentships will be four-year posts based within the University’s Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, and Medical and Veterinary Sciences.

The funding aims to assist UK research organisations to make a significant impact on unmet national needs for advanced biomedical and health research skills by funding studentships in key priority areas within the field of medical science.

Richard Apps, Professor of Neuroscience and Julian Paton, Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, led the bid for ten studentships to help support research within the field of in vivo systems neuroscience targeting disease.

Ian Day, Professor of Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology in the Department of Social Medicine, led the bid for ten studentships, following the University's Predictive Life Sciences theme, to strengthen the application of mathematical, statistical and computational approaches in biomedical research.

Dr Jon Lane, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry, led the bid for six studentships to support research in quantitative cell imaging.

Professor Apps said: “This a terrific boost for Bristol. PhD students are the life-blood of research and this award will help keep Bristol at the forefront of UK medical research as well as provide a first class training to the next generation of British biomedical scientists.”