BHF Studentships

British Heart Foundation – National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI)

BHF CRE4 PhD Studentships

The BHF CRE will be offering several 4 PhD studentships jointly with the Imperial NIHR Cardiovascular BRC (Biomedical Research Centre) and the School of Public Health.

Two of these will be studentships offered jointly with the Imperial NIHR Cardiovascular BRC (Biomedical Research Centre) and two with the School of Public health. These studentships will be starting in October 2025.

The studentships will cover:

• Home fees only. Overseas students need to cover the fee difference themselves or from a different source.
• Stipend will be on a BHF rate
• Consumables and a small travel allowance

The titles of available projects and more information will be available here in January 2025.

These studentships will integrate into Imperial’s BHF DTP providing reciprocal benefit and opportunities for cohort building and networking; in line with this the studentships will begin in October 2025.

BHF 4-yr MRes/PhD Studentships

The BHF-Doctoral Training Programme (DTP) at National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) has been extremely successful and is now on its 5^th Scheme. The Programme is led by Professor Jane Mitchell, Professor Allan Lawrie, Professor Peter Weinberg and a committee of Principal Investigators (PIs) as well as being supported by the BHF Centre Manager, Mrs Jaya Rajamanie.

The majority of the committee are current BHF Programme/Chair holders and/or have a track-record of major BHF or UKRI support. Professor Mitchell has an outstanding, award-winning background in Postgraduate Studies and has been Director for Postgraduate Studies (DPS) at NHLI. Professor Mitchell heads NHLI’s Cardiovascular Division. Professor Weinberg (Faculty of Engineering) brings supervisory experience from the cross-disciplinary PhD scheme embedded within the BHF Centres of Excellence from 2008-2018.

The programme retains the best elements of our current BHF-DTP and benefits from a number of significant new innovations around multidisciplinary project selection and student supervision/experience. The programme includes projects that addresses only the timeliest of research questions and only those with strong translational potential. Projects will be selected across all cardiovascular areas and embrace the partnering of crosscutting technologies and approaches, including Bioengineering, Chemistry and Data Sciences. This together with our core elements will equip our students with a world-class training in research and a breadth of transferable skills.

Benefits of the programme

In taking advantage of all areas of science and technology, this programme benefits Imperial by providing a dynamic platform for translation of research and innovation generated within the University. Additional benefits include provision of highly prestigious, well-funded PhD packages attracting the brightest of students, with realistic consumable budgets allowing for achievable and novel research outcomes. Finally, the programme benefits Imperial because it will operate within a framework of best practice in postgraduate teaching: where innovations in cohort building and research culture are established and  shared, with other DTPs within the College.

Our programme benefits the BHF because it will align directly to their mission statement by focusing projects on current, pioneering, and translatable research programmes with interdisciplinary approaches. The programme will also build capacity within other major BHF investments within NHLI and deliver new insights, treatments, therapeutic targets and/or devices for the benefit of those with cardiovascular disease.

Supervision

Supervisors will come together from different groups/disciplines to form, applications judged according to criterial in line with the BHF’s mission statement. Top scoring projects will be awarded. 

Click here to see a list of current BHF approved list of supervisors

Projects

The studentship programme for the October 2023 intake is now closed. The next set of projects will be advertised in February/March 2024. A breath of projects currently being offered through the Programme:

2021

Therapeutic potential of targeting the Rgl1 pathway, a novel transducer of vascular inflammation and atherogenesis - supervised by Dr Nick Kirkby, Professor Jane Mitchell

Synthesis and Efficacy of a New Class of Hydrophobic Haemostatic Medical Devices - supervised by Dr Choon H Yap, Dr Mike Emerson

2022

Minimally invasive delivery of cardiac cells via heart-adhesive and injectable shape-memory patches – supervised by Professor Molly Stevens & Professor Cesare Terracciano

Investigation of the role of alterations in zinc homeostasis in the pathogenesis and treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension – supervised by Professor Lan Zhao, Professor Julia Gorelik and Professor Martin Wilkins

Investigating blood brain vascular dysfunction in dementia - supervised by Dr Dave Carling & Dr William Scott

Development and optimization of 3D SRUS for myocardial imaging through the development of non-rigid registration, localization and tracking techniques - Professor Mengxing Tang & Professor Fu Siong Ng 

BHF Student Annual Symposium

Students in their MRes/First year of the programme organize the annual symposium and usually tend to attract exceptionally good speakers covering timely and current topics. In 2022, the student’s symposium title was ‘MiS(S)DIAGNOSED - Why Sex Matters in Cardiovascular Diseases, 27 September 2022’.

This year, the title of the Symposium is: HEART OF ETHICS - Tracing Cardiovascular Ethics through Time and Innovation. This will take place on Thursday 28 September 2023, 15:00. There will be some exciting talks followed by refreshments & canapés and a chance to meet our students. If you would like to attend then please register on Eventbrite.

News

BHF Imperial Fundraising Group – is an active student group led by Anies Makdohmi-Sohi, who have arranged some highly successful activities to fundraise for the BHF. Read more about their current activities.

Making Waves - Making waves is an initiative from the NHLI to highlight female students/staff for their work. Maike Haensel (one of our BHF 4-year student, Intake 2020) was selected for her podcast (The Elevat(Her) Podcast), which she co-hosted with her colleague Salina Nicoleau. This is the website, which was created: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/stories/making-waves-maike-salina/.