Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Chemical Synthesis (CS) is an area upon which much of modern society relies as it enables the customized fabrication of products that are the ubiquitous materials of life and society. These include new drugs and medicines, new materials and polymers, nanomaterials, and a vast range of fine and effect chemicals on which the texture and quality of our lives depend. Without future core developments in the chemical sciences, UK plc and societal progress will stall and be left behind in a ferociously competitive modern world. We now plan to train a new generation of world-class PhD students so that the UK chemical industry can maintain its competitive position in the world as a place for highly innovative and creative research. One of the hardest aspects of CS is mastery of the vast 'synthetic tool box' of techniques required to become a professional chemist. The perfect chemist would be akin to highly skilled F1 mechanic with a state of the art toolbox and the ability to design and engineer from scratch - a molecular mechanic if you like. However in reality a student is often focussed too narrowly towards a particular area of synthesis and as a result can end up with a budget toolkit and a limited range of experience. We wish to explore CS by adopting a new 'Holistic' research approach that will be integrated with a revolutionary e-learning framework in a way that has not been previously articulated in the field of Chemistry. Instead of a traditional 'one PI - one-student - one idea' programme, we wish to bring together a group of internationally renowned chemists from organic, inorganic, physical and theoretical backgrounds to pool their skills in order to design from the ground up new and useful solutions for chemical synthesis. Our Research Opportunities Group (ROG) at Bristol does exactly this by bringing together staff from across and outside the chemistry discipline to discuss potential research areas in a Brainstorming format customized to our needs. We have found that this has been highly effective and has led to new research that simply would not have blossomed in a traditional approach. We now wish to instill our ROG philosophy and modus operandi into our students. Our aim is to get these students to think about their research as a collective rather than as isolated individuals working in separate research groups. The benefits of this will be enormous, not least in that they will all play an active role in the design of each-others projects as well as being exposed to a pool of supervisory experience of great breadth and experience. Key to the training experience will be the design and implementation of a revolutionary e-learning resource called the postgraduate Dynamic Laboratory Manual (pgDLM). The pgDLM will allow students to carry out a virtual version of an essential, often complex, experimental technique before experiencing it in the laboratory thus gaining a much deeper understanding of an experiment before they carry it out for real . By creating a pgDLM with an evolving library of online techniques we will not only enable students to embrace new techniques confidently but also simultaneously establish a valuable resource which will be made available to all practitioners of CS in both academe and industry. Industry will play a key role in defining the focus and contemporary relevance of the csDTC and will be broadly represented on a Steering Group. These external advisors will play an active role in project selection, assessment and will participate in the training programme. By producing the right product and working closely with industrial partners from the outset, the csDTC will be well positioned to leverage external support to sustain the Centre beyond the EPSRC funding period. Through this vision we aim to produce a new generation of industrial and academic leaders and, by delivering this goal, secure Bristol as a premier centre for Chemical Synthesis.

Lung diseases such as Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease affect one in five people in the UK and kill someone every 5 minutes. The number of patients with these lung diseases was increasing in the NHS even before COVID-19. We are also learning about serious long-term effects of COVID-19 that will add to the existing burden on the NHS. There have been huge advances in technologies that allow scientists to see inside the lungs and measure what we breathe out. While this information has taught us quite a lot, it is still very difficult to combine different sources of information and turn it into new or improved treatments. Getting that useful information out of large amounts of medical test results requires sophisticated physics-based mathematical and statistical models run on powerful computers - a combination of techniques called data-driven biophysical multiscale modelling. The ability to develop those kinds of models will allow us to better understand how diseases start and how they progress. Our BIOREME network will support new research that uses these techniques to mimic biological and mechanical processes that occur throughout the lung. Using the information from thousands of lung tests, the idea is then to get these models to mimic real diseased lungs. In order to improve and build trust in these models, some of our projects will be focused on comparing their outputs to results from other lung tests. Medical scientists can then use such models to test what might happen in a particular type of lung disease, and to investigate possible responses to new treatments before testing these in patients. Most importantly, this will lead to the design of new drugs and improved trials for new treatments. The first step will be to get medics, imaging experts and mathematicians together with industry and patient group representatives to decide on which specific research areas to prioritise, where this form of modelling will make the most difference. This NetworkPlus award will then allow us to organise multiple events, in different formats, designed to help researchers to collaborate, and to come up with the best initial projects to help achieve our goals. We will then help the researchers to develop these into larger projects that will attract funding from other sources and continue the research into the future. Even after this funding runs out, BIOREME will provide a lively forum for lung researchers to continue solving problems using these advanced computational tools. Finally, BIOREME will support outreach activities to engage and educate communities and young people in the role that mathematics can play in medicine and healthcare, and to inspire a new generation of respiratory scientists from diverse backgrounds.

The traditional PhD programme begins with a student seeking out a PhD position early on in their final year of undergraduate study. The time elapsed between a student choosing their project and actually starting is generally between 6-8 months - can a student really be sure that the right choice has been made under these circumstances? This choice is probably the most important decision an aspiring professional researcher can make, yet students can make ill informed, naive or simply unsuitable PhD choices based on their perceived interests and limited research experience. Bristol Chemical Synthesis (BCS) is a Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) that offers a different and much enhanced PhD training experience to the traditional path. Crucially, students join the Centre in October but do not choose their PhD research project until 7-months later. Students spend these 7-months completing a unique, multifaceted training period called Postgraduate Advanced Chemical Techniques (PACT). The over-arching goal of PACT is to equip the students with the tools required to make the best-informed PhD project choice, to develop a creative attitude towards problem solving and to build self-confidence with presentations and by speaking publicly. PACT also provides a formal assessment mechanism before students progress to their PhD projects. Brainstorming involves the students generating ideas on outline research proposals which they then present to the staff members in a lively and engaging feedback session, which invariably sees new and student-driven ideas emerge. By encouraging teamwork and presentation skills, as well as allowing students to become fully engaged with the projects and staff, brainstorming ensures that students take control of a PhD proposal before they start - 'Partners not Slaves' is our vision. Research Broadening Sabbaticals comprise three successive 7-week lab rotations designed to include a period of "known" work, enabling the student to practice new skills required for further research. Rotations are important in giving students the opportunity to learn new techniques beyond their undergraduate experience, providing them with time to consider and reflect on their choice of PhD by offering "tasters" in different areas of synthetic chemistry. Dynamic Laboratory Manual (DLM) enabled experiments allow students to experience an interactive, virtual version of an essential experimental technique. Pioneered at the undergraduate level at Bristol, DLMs consist of a mixture of simulations, videos, tutorials and quizzes to allow the student to gain a full understanding of a technique and learn from mistakes quickly, effectively and safely before entering the lab. Chemical Synthesis is an area upon which much of modern society relies as it enables the customised fabrication of products that are the essential materials of our daily lives. Examples are wide and diverse from vital life saving drugs to the chromic materials that make your iPad screen change in an instant. There are 15 key UK industry sectors in which chemistry is an essential component, employing over 5 million people and contributing £258bn (21%) to the UK's GDP. Pharma, agrochem, petrochem, fine & bulk chemical manufacturing and CRO industries are major players in these industries and UK competitiveness here is unsustainable without the continued supply of highly trained & skilled chemical synthesis PhD graduates. Our Centre will train the next generation of synthetic chemistry architects equipped to solve the diverse molecular problems of the future.

Modern society is reliant on chemical synthesis for the discovery, development and generation of a wide range of essential products. These include advanced materials and polymers, bulk fine chemicals and fertilizers, and most importantly products that impact on human health and food security such as medicines, drugs, and agrochemicals. Future developments in these areas are benficial for society as a whole and also for a wide range of UK industries. To date it has been common practice for the chemical industry to recruit synthetic chemists after PhD/postdoctoral training and then augment their synthetic knowledge with specific industrial training. Due to the changing nature of the chemical and pharmaceutical industry it is recognized that synthetic chemists require an early understanding of the major challenges and methodologies of biology and medicine. The concept of our SBM CDT arose from the need to address this skills gap without compromising training in chemical synthesis. We have designed a training programme focused on EPSRC priorities to produce internationally outstanding doctoral scientists fluent in cutting edge synthesis, and its application to problems in biology and medicine. To achieve this, we have formed a genuinely integrated public-private partnership for doctoral training whereby we combine the knowledge and expertise of industrialists into our programme for both training and research. We have forged partnerships with 11 global industrial partners (GSK, UCB, Vertex, Evotec, Eisai, AstraZeneca, Syngenta, Novartis, Takeda, Sumitomo and Pfizer) and a government agency (DSTL), which have offered: (i) financial support (£4.6M cash and £2.4M in-kind); (ii) contributions to taught courses; (iii) research placements; and (iv) management assistance. Our training partners are global leaders in the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries and are committed to the discovery, development and manufacture of medicines and agrochemicals for the improvement of human health. To fully exploit the opportunities offered by commercial partners, the SBM Centre will adopt an IP-free model to allow completely unfettered exchange of information, know-how and specific expertise between students and supervisors on different projects and across different industrial companies; this would not be possible under existing studentship arrangements. This free exchange of research data and ideas will generate highly trained and well-balanced researchers capable of world-leading research output, and importantly will enable students to benefit from networks between academic and industrial scientists. This will also facilitate interactions between different industrial and government groups, leading to links between pharmaceutical and agrochemical scientists (for example). The one supervisor - one student model, typical of current studentship programmes, is unable to address significant and long-term training and research topics that require a critical mass of multidisciplinary researchers; consequently we propose that substantive research projects will also be cohort-driven. We envisage that this CDT will have a number of training and research foci ('Project Fields') in which synthesis is the unifying core discipline, to enable our public-private partnership to tackle major problems at the chemistry-biology-medicine interface. Our focused research fields are: New Synthetic Methods, 3D Templates for "Lead-Like" Compounds, Functional Probes for Epigenetics, Next Generation Anti-Infectives, Natural Product Chemistry and Tools for Neuroscience. This doctoral training programme will employ a uniquely integrated academic-industrial training model, producing graduates capable of addressing major challenges in the pharmaceutical/agrochemical industries who will ultimately make a major impact on UK science.