The UCL Wellcome 4-year PhD Programme in Mental Health Science will deliver student centred, cohort-based training, with an explicit emphasis on interdisciplinary research. It will empower students to take a fresh, integrated look at the causes of mental health problems, together with the most effective ways to treat and prevent them.

The Programme combines scientific excellence with a commitment to improving the working environment and transition support for trainees, with a focus on improving diversity and supporting student mental health. We commit to being part of an evolving community of researchers who will develop and share practice to bring science and culture together, placing both firmly at the heart of what we do.

The Programme brings together researchers across a diverse set of fields relevant to mental health, across three core Programme themes:

• Mechanism: Identification of the molecular, cellular, neural systems and cognitive processes that drive and maintain the symptoms of mental health conditions from childhood to old age, particularly drawing on UCL’s world-leading neuroscience.
• Population Mental Health: Understanding risk factors for mental health problems using epidemiological methods, leveraging UCL’s unique strength in population cohorts to identify social and environmental determinants of mental health problems, as well as genetic epidemiology.
• Intervention: Development, targeting and evaluation of new treatments and preventative interventions for mental health problems, including experimental medicine and clinical trial methodology.

Programme highlights

• 4-year full-time Wellcome fellowship with generous support for research costs and training
• “1+3” PhD model – 1 year of rotational projects and training, followed by a three-year PhD project co-supervised by researchers from different disciplines
• A world-class interdisciplinary research environment
• A choice of over 60 research groups for rotation projects and the main thesis
• Opportunity to join the UCL-NIMH Joint Doctoral Training Program in Neuroscience – extending the program to 5 years
• Support for career development following thesis submission

Key dates

Application deadline: 31 January 2020

Interviews: 17/18 March 2020

Start date: 28 September 2020

Find out more: www.ucl.ac.uk/mental-health/study/ucl-wellcome-4-year-phd-mental-health-science

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