Professor Nigel Vincent Manchester Doctoral College Professor Nigel Vincent Associate Vice President for Graduate Education and Director of the Manchester Doctoral College

Establishment of the MDC Originated in the summer of 2008 EPSRC call for Doctoral Training Centres Seeking to fund innovative training environments that draw on research excellence and will produce highly skilled and talented researchers who are able to address challenging research problems to the benefit of the UK economy in the 21st century £250million investment creating 44 training centres across the UK and generating more than 2000 PhD students over 8 years Provision of internal structures to ensure consistency and interaction between centres that cross school, faculty and institutional boundaries

Rationale for CDT Model 1 CDTs are a bold new approach to training PhD students, creating communities of researchers working on current and future challenges 2 The multidisciplinary centres bring together diverse areas of expertise to training engineers and scientists with the skills knowledge and confidence to tackle today’s evolving issues 3 Create new working cultures, build relationships between teams in universities and forge lasting links with industry

Principles of a DTC Cohort of students on a 4-year PhD course or equivalent where the first year allows time for exploration of the domain before deciding on a specific project Challenging and original research project to PhD level 25% taught component (broadly equivalent to a PG Masters) Involve activities within the wider research area of the centre and training in transferable skills, including public engagement Internationalisation

Principles of an IDC 4 year PG award Incorporate a taught component relevant to the needs of, and undertaken in partnership with, industry Suited to the needs of industry and providing a more vocationally oriented doctorate degree Students spend 75% of their time working directly within their specific collaborating company Packages of training courses tailored to Research Engineers’ needs, including management skills as well as specialist technical subjects Projects are designed jointly by the academics and the co-operating company, who jointly supervise the student Research projects undertaken must be the equivalent of a PhD level project and must demonstrate innovation

Advantages of CDTs for Students No need to choose research topic from the outset Empowers student to choose research area and supervisor Allows an informed decision on research project selection based on experience Provides practical research skills and core conceptual knowledge Offers an interdisciplinary perspective Opportunities to build links with advanced researchers elsewhere in the University and with partner institutions Chance to share research development as part of a cohort of fellow doctoral students

MDC Structure