Career impact

Preparing brilliant minds for rewarding academic careers

The majority of our doctoral students go on to pursue careers in academia or research and our programme offers the teaching experience, skills training and guidance to help you achieve your career goals. Combined with the essential skills and experience, the people that you meet during your doctoral experience will be key to helping you secure your future academic placement.

Our Doctoral graduates have joined leading universities, research centres and institutions, others have sought top positions in industry or founded successful start-ups. 

In order to prepare you for an academic career, our Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) programme gives you the opportunity to develop your teaching skills, whilst making a positive contribution to the Business School’s taught programmes. After successfully completing the in-house training programme, Graduate Teaching Assistants perform a wide range of teaching duties to support the School’s Master’s programmes. These roles include leading tutorials and holding office hours for core modules, acting as tutors for online modules and module leaders for short courses such as Matlab and VBA, marking coursework and second marking exams.

The Graduate School at Imperial College London provides a comprehensive Professional Skills Development programme for doctoral students. The programme ensures you acquire basic research skills at the start of your doctoral studies and continue to develop as a well-rounded researcher, gaining the skills and experience to successfully complete your research degree and move on to an academic career. You can select from courses covering a range of areas such as literature reviews, thesis management, information management, presenting, project management, statistics, career planning and grant writing.

You will have unrivalled opportunity to make long-lasting connections that will prove invaluable in your future career. You’ll mix with fellow students, alumni, adjunct professors and visiting faculty, from across Imperial College.

Research seminars

Our research departments run seminars where internal and external academics discuss their latest work. As well as providing insights into yet-to-be-published research by top academics from around the world, the seminars offer networking opportunities and speakers often lead special topic workshops for research students.

Conference participation

The opportunity to present and share your work is an extremely important aspect of doctoral studies in order to gain valuable feedback on your research and where you can form important connections with fellow academics who specialise in your field. You will have the opportunity to present your work in research department seminars and are encouraged to submit your research for presentation at conferences. The Business School has funding available to help cover expenses associated with presenting at conferences.

Graduate placement

Our graduate placements

In recent years, our PhD students have joined leading universities, research centres and institutions such as Tsinghua University, University College London, Copenhagen Business School, the Bank of England, the University of Bath, King’s College London, National Chengchi University, the University of Sussex and Renmin University in China. Others have sought top positions in industry or founded successful start-ups.

The doctoral programme has been re-structured in recent years to focus more on academic development and it is anticipated that over the coming years placements will focus more on academia than industry.

Recent graduate placements have included:

2021-22 graduates

  • Quantitative Risk Analyst, Citi Financial Services

2019-20 graduates

  • Head of Sustainability, FNZ Group 

2018-19 graduates

  • Senior Teaching Fellow, ICBS 

2022-23 graduates

  • Health Policy Analyst, OECD
  • Teaching Fellow, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College
  • Research Economist, Bank of England

2021-22 graduates

  • Researcher, Mathematica 

2020-21graduates

  • Quantitative Scientist, Flatiron Health, New York 
  • Fellow, Department of Geography & Environment, LSE 
  • Deployment Strategist, Palantir Technologies

2018-19 graduates

  • Research Fellow, SDA Bocconi in Milan 

2017-2018 graduates

  • Research Associate, School of Public Health, Imperial College 
  • Research Economist, Dutch Health Authority

2022-23 graduates

  • Assistant Professor of Finance, Lebanese American University
  • Assistant Professor in Financial Technology, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 
  • Assistant Professor of Finance, Queen Mary University London

2021-22 graduates

  • Assistant Professor in Finance, Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania
  • Economist, World Bank (also offered Assistant Professor of Finance- Cornell University)
  • Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam Business School

2020-21 graduates

  • Systematic Macro Trading, Caxton Associates
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate, Judge Business School, Cambridge University
  • Postdoc Researcher, University of Mannheim 
  • Senior Quantitative Analyst, Fitch Ratings
  • Senior Researcher, Bank of England 
  • Assistant Professor Leibniz Institute 
  • Senior Research Economist, Bank of England
  • Research Affiliate, Centre for Global Finance and Technology ICBS 
  • Researcher, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE in Frankfurt

2019-2020 graduates

  • Assistant Professor, Universite Laval 
  • Fixed Income Analyst, Industrial Securities Company 
  • Assistant Professor in Finance and Statistical Analysis, Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta 
  • Assistant Professor in Finance, SKEMA Business School, Paris 
  • Assistant Professor of Finance, Smith School of Business, Queen's University, Ontario
  • Visiting Researcher ICBS 

2018-19 graduates

  • Founder, Seedsource
  • Teaching & Research Associate, ICBS 
  • Assistant Professor, Financial Management Department, IESE Barcelona 

2017-18 graduates

  • Senior Teaching Fellow, ICBS 
  • EU Policy Officer in the Secondary Markets Team, ESMA 
  • Assistant Professor, Renmin University in China 
  • Financial Risk Manager, Just Group 
  • Non-Executive Director, BCS Prime Brokerage UK
  • Economist, Bank of England 
  • Quantitative Investment Strategies Research, Barclays Bank 
  • Teaching & Research Associate, ICBS
  • Quantitative Analyst with the Bank of America 

2022-23 graduates

  • Postdoc, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland
  • Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Business School
  • Assistant Professor, NEOMA Business School, France
  • Policy Research and Advisor, OECD
  • Lecturer in Leadership, Henley Business School, University of Reading 

2021-22 graduates

  • Head of Acceleration and Programme Design, LSE Generate 

2020-21 graduates

  • Teaching Fellow in International Business, Said Business School, University of Oxford

2019-20 graduates

  • Assistant Professor in Organisational Behaviour at DCU Business School, Dublin 
  • Teaching Assistant at ICBS 
  • Postdoc at ETH Zurich 
  • Postdoctoral Researcher, ETH Zurich

2018-19 graduates

  • Research Associate, School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh
  • Teaching & Research Associate, ICBS
  • Assistant Professor, Institute of Telecommunications Management, National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan 
  • Teaching & Research Associate, ICBS 

2017-18 graduates

  • Executive Vice President, Emirates NBD
  • Assistant Professor in Marketing, University of Sussex
  • Fellow, LSE
  • Research Associate, Faculty of the Built Environment at UCL 
  • Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Management, Strategy & Organisation, Bath University 
  • Senior Teaching Fellow, Imperial Dyson School of Design Engineering 

2022-23 graduates

  • Assistant Professor, IESEG Paris

2020-21 graduates

  • Teaching Fellow, Warwick Business School
  • Research Associate, Cambridge Judge Business School 

2018-19 graduates

  • Lecturer of Digital Fashion Marketing, School of Design, Leeds University 

2017-18 graduates

  • Assistant Professor in Marketing, University of Sussex

What our students say

“An academic career requires not only critical skills and independence, but also perseverance. Once a student has gone through a PhD journey, they are equipped to handle various types of situations. I plan to use these skills gained during my doctoral programme at Imperial to further develop my independent research projects, to collaborate with international researchers, and to mentor and supervise my own future PhD students.”
Ruxandra Luca
Doctoral alumna
Hear more from Ruxandra

Explore more