PhD slideshow 1

Wellcome Trust and AHSC funded Clinical PhD Programmes

PhD Image 2

Wellcome Trust and AHSC funded Clinical PhD Programmes

PhD Image 3

Wellcome Trust and AHSC funded Clinical PhD Programmes

PhD image 4

Wellcome Trust and AHSC funded Clinical PhD Programmes

PhD image 5

Wellcome Trust and AHSC funded Clinical PhD Programmes

Key features

Our 4i Clinical PhD Programmes are typically 3 years in duration and funding provides:

  • A clinical salary
  • PhD registration fees at the UK/EU rate
  • Research expenses

** The Wellcome Trust Imperial 4i programme runs from 2017-2022.  The scheme is hugely successful, appointing talented clinicians to 18 WT funded and 10 other funded posts across the five year funding period.  The last intake of 4i Fellows was appointed in January 2021 and there will be no further recruitment to this programme **

For details of Wellcome Trust funded PhD Fellowships available 2022-2027 visit the Wellcome website

Imperial College London is keen to attract and cultivate the most promising clinical academic researchers at all stages of their careers. The Faculty of Medicine is one of the largest in Europe and is at the forefront of translating biomedical discoveries into patient benefit.

Available annually, we have a number of funded PhD programme fellowships for clinicians. Our doctoral training programmes immerse researchers in world-leading scientific discovery and its translation, focussing on the academic strengths of Imperial that are relevant to all major health problems. Our schemes enable early career success by placing talented individuals in a highly supportive environment and providing each fellow with cutting-edge research projects under experienced supervision and mentorship, regardless of the potential clinical specialty of the applicant.

Applications are invited from exceptional medical graduates who demonstrate a commitment to a research career and aspire to become the next generation of clinical academic leaders to join our prestigious PhD Fellowship programmes. Applicants must be fully qualified medical doctors in training in the UK and at Core Training or Internal Medicine (IMT) level or above (or in GP Training), in any specialty. GP Trainees may apply if within 12 months of having CCT.

Accordion widget - Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome 4i Clinical PhD Programme

Our aim is to develop the clinical academic leaders of the future. The clinician scientist, through education and training in both biomedical science and clinical medicine, is uniquely positioned to develop key insights and identify knowledge gaps between biomedical research and clinical practice.

The Imperial Immunity, Inflammation, Infection and Informatics (4i) programme offers an unparalleled and comprehensive portfolio of high quality internationally competitive research fellowships.

The Imperial Clinician Scientist programme focuses on the academic strengths of the College that are relevant to major health problems: Immunity, Inflammation, Infection and Informatics.

We have shaped our scheme to enable ‘early career success’ by placing talented individuals in a highly supportive environment and providing each individual with cutting-edge research projects under experienced supervision and mentorship.

Through joint appointments and satellite laboratories with the Francis Crick Institute, our programme can offer training opportunities within this interdisciplinary biomedical research institute. There is also the opportunity of training in the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, which is jointly managed by Imperial College and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 

Successful candidates will be selected on the basis of academic potential, regardless of clinical specialty and matched to projects and supervisors during exploratory discussions with our PhD Programmes selection panel.

ICCIS and LFFMS Clinical PhD schemes

We will NOT be recruiting fellows to these schemes in Autumn 2021 .

Both the Imperial College Clinician-Investigator Scholarship, ICCIS (generously funded by a private donor) and The Lee Family Faculty of Medicine Scholarships, LFFMS (funded through generous gift from the Lee Charitable Foundation) support doctors demonstrating exceptional clinical academic merit and potential and who wish to undertake rigorous research training within the Faculty of Medicine working in partnership with its NHS partners in the Imperial College AHSC.  ICCIS and LFFMS funded fellows are not expected to identify research projects prior to applying and have the option to undertake research projects under the Immunity, Inflammation, Infection and Informatics 4i research themes, or to go beyond the parameters of the themes, providing the project focuses on the academic strengths of Imperial and there is agreement to do so.

Successful candidates will be selected on the basis of academic potential, regardless of clinical specialty, and matched to projects and supervisors during exploratory discussions with our PhD Programmes selection panel.

The British Heart Foundation Fellowships

The British Heart Foundation fellowships: AI in cardiovascular science

The British Heart Foundation has pioneered initiatives to bring together cardiovascular and non-biological science with their Centres of Excellence scheme. During 2020 they have funded a £4M Centre of Excellence at Imperial to harness the interactions between cardiovascular science, bioengineering, advanced imaging and Artificial Intelligence.  PhD students will join multidisciplinary teams based in our state of the art buildings on the Imperial Hammersmith and White City Campus to use these interactions to produce new therapies and diagnostic tools.  British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence

AI for Healthcare - UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training

The Centre’s vision is to train a new-generation of innovators in Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to Healthcare and is inviting applications from clinical PhD fellows, along with non-clinical PhDs.

We take the view that AI is ultimately a question about how to realise artificial systems that solve problems presently requiring human intelligence to solve (e.g. problems solved by clinicians, nurses and therapists). The contemporary answer to the AI research question is machine learning, i.e. learning how to solve the problem from experience instead of programming it. Learning in turn requires data, which extends our view of AI to encompass also data science and data engineering. However, AI in our Centre implies an entire system that solves a practical (healthcare) problem, this may require combining different algorithmic and representational approaches that encompass machine learning, robotics, optimisation, symbolic reasoning, natural language processing, and computer vision. Our training outcomes are AI researchers who have learned to move fluidly across the disciplinary AI/healthcare boundaries and can develop and implement deployable solutions with the ultimate goal to transform patient treatment.

The training programme offers expert supervision (each doctoral researcher will have at least 1 AI and 1 clinical supervisor), cohort and integrated training. The clinical supervisors and healthcare partners span the full breadth of healthcare challenges facing society, such as dementia, brain and mental health, infectious diseases, cancer and surgery, obesity and diabetes, cardiovascular and lung diseases, intensive care and primary care.

This programme is separate to the 4i scheme, please visit the AI for Health website for further details and how to apply https://ai4health.io/

Recruitment information

The Wellcome Trust 4i Programme award was very successful, with 5 cohorts of fellows starting annually from 2017-2021. Please note that we are no longer recruiting to this scheme. 

Supervisors and projects

Our supervisors are independent clinical and non-clinical scientists, who are leading high-quality research programmes within the portfolio of the 4i theme. We have high-quality researchers across the 4i themes, including a large number of Wellcome Trust Investigators, located across different faculties of the College and within the MRC LMS and Francis Crick Institute. Our overall strategy is to offer a wide range of research projects within the 4i domains so that we can attract and accommodate a broad range of applicants.

Supervisors and projects list 2020 (updated Nov 2020)

Supporting academic leaders of the future

Celebrating the Imperial 4i Clinician Scientist Training Programme event: December 2019

As 2019 drew to a close, the Imperial 4i PhD Fellows came together with colleagues from across the College, Imperial College AHSC and funding bodies to celebrate their research and achievements. Taking place at South Kensington’s historic 170 Queen’s Gate just before Christmas, the event featured a thought-provoking keynote talk from Professor Sir Mark Walport on 'The future landscape of biomedical science’ and engaging presentations from our 2017 intake of Fellows on how their research has progressed so far. Other Fellows on the programme also displayed posters presenting their research topics and took the opportunity to discuss their research and catch up over refreshments and wine at the end of the showcase.

Follow this link to see the College news story about the event: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/194956/imperial-researchers-showcase-projects-tackle-major/

4i Fellows with Directors of the scheme, Professor Matthew Pickering and Professor Clare Lloyd