PhD Studentships

This scholarship offers a full fee waiver for the last academic year of a PhD for recent Imperial graduates. The recipients of this scholarship will be expected to finish the PhD project within 3 years, with the first 2 years of fees being funded by the applicant. In case any extensions are needed beyond 3 years, these would have to be funded by the applicant. Only Imperial College graduates that have overseas fee status are eligible to apply. The Department encourages diversity and will accept a high merit degree classification from applicants. For more information please contact chemphd@imperial.ac.uk. 

The Department of Chemistry has departmental scholarships available for PhD applicants starting in 2027/28.

This scheme is only eligible to applicants who have home fee status. The scholarship will cover the full fees and stipend (UKRI London rate - £22,780 for 2025-26) for the 3 years 6 months of the student’s PhD studies.

We encourage applications from all backgrounds to apply. The Departmental Scholarship Panel will consider academic excellence, research potential and extracurricular activities. The Panel will also take into account other aspects, such as overcoming adversity, outreach and community activities and widening participation.

Interested candidates should make contact and discuss a research project with a PhD supervisor based in the Chemistry Department. After discussions with the chosen supervisor, candidates must complete a Chemistry Department scholarship application form. The supervisor will then return the documentation to the department for consideration by the Scholarship Panel. The date for submission of this documentation is Tuesday 1st December 2026. There will be no panel interview.

We are committed to equality and valuing diversity. The Department of Chemistry is an Athena SWAN gold Award winner, a Stonewall Diversity Champion, a Two Ticks Employer, and is working in partnership with GIRES to promote respect for trans people. We particularly encourage applicants from underrepresented backgrounds to apply.

The mission of the ICB CDT is to train postgraduate researchers with the language, knowledge and skills to enable them to work at the interface between the physical and life sciences, producing researchers with expertise and understanding that spans both fields, and who are able to embrace Lab of the Future platforms – which is at the heart of our new remit. This skill set is in great demand from future employers and short supply and has the potential to revolutionise the state of the art with respect to manipulating, measuring and modelling molecular interactions in biological systems and will transform R&D pipelines.

This will transform our understanding of molecular mechanisms of disease, stimulate novel agrochemical design and underpin structured product breakthroughs, whilst also enabling fundamental discovery in the life and medical sciences.

Our programme, with EDI, student empowerment & cohort formation at its core, fuses blue skies & translational research with professional skills courses and workplace training. Students emerge with a knowledge of molecular technologies, sustainable product development, lean innovation & early-stage commercialisation. Our multi-disciplinary supervision model, with every student in the CDT having at least two supervisors, one from the physical sciences and one from the life sciences, comprises 1-year MRes + 3-year PhD, with for the first time an optional 1 year post doctoral fellowship, called Elevate, that will offer graduates unparalleled in-work experience.

Novel carbonylation homologation strategies for peptide bond formation 

 Supervisors: Dr Philip Miller (Imperial College London) and Dr Christan Holtze (BASF)

Home Department: Departments of Chemistry at Imperial College London, Molecular Sciences Research Hub 

White City Campus

Funding and Deadline: To be eligible for support, applicants must be “UK Residents” as defined by the EPSRC. The studentship is for 4 years starting as soon as possible and will provide full coverage of standard tuition fees and an annual tax-free stipend of approximately £21,240. Applicants should hold or expect to obtain a First-Class Honours or a high 2:1 degree at master's level (or equivalent) in any relevant chemical engineering or science subject. Funding is co-funded through Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and BASF.

Project summary

Novel peptide therapeutics are experiencing burgeoning growth in the pharmaceutical sector.  One of the chief challenges, however, in the peptide market is their high production costs.  This is a direct result of the various protecting group strategies and reagents that mediate amino-carboxylic acid coupling. Challenges therefore remain in the efficient production of peptides, including low atom economy due to the protecting group strategies, excess use of reagents and vast amounts of solvents needed for purifications. 

This project seeks to explore new strategies for peptide synthesis via amide formation using novel catalytic carbonylative coupling methods.  Historically, carbonylation reactions have been conducted using high pressures of carbon monoxide and a transition metal catalyst at high temperatures, however, recent advances in catalytic directing group chemistry, C-H activations and photocatalysis have opened alternative routes to efficient amide bond formation.  This project will focus on novel catalytic strategies that exploit new photocatalysts, have different mechanisms and can be conducted under milder reaction conditions.  We will seek to exploit emerging chemical strategies for peptide bond formation and to leverage advances in flow chemistry for performing and scaling up these reactions. 

We are seeking an ambitious and highly motivated candidate with experience of synthetic chemistry (organic or inorganic) who is willing to work with industry partners.  You will investigate a range of catalytic and photocatalytic reaction processes primarily for the insertion of carbon monoxide for the preparation of small organic carbonyl molecules and peptides.

The Industry Case (IDLA) PhD student will join an interdisciplinary cohort of students working under the umbrella of the IConIC Prosperity Partnership. An internship of min. 3 months will be facilitated and sponsored by BASF- Chemetall for the utilization of specific infrastructure and technology transfer.

To apply, please complete an application form Application process | Study | Imperial College London.   Informal enquiries about the post and the application process can be made to Genevieve Prescott (iconic-pp@imperial.ac.uk).

Eligibility for student funding: https://www.ukri.org/councils/esrc/career-and-skills-development/funding-for-postgraduate-training/eligibility-for-studentship-funding/ 

A PhD position funded on Jarvist Moore Frost's Royal Society University Research Fellowship is available for a January-October 2026 start date. 

The two projects being actively recruited for are:

1) Designing antimicrobial peptides with machine learning and computational chemistry approaches

2) Machine learning surrogate quantum mechanical models (particularly Tight-binding and PPP)

Both these proects focus on developing new theoretical techniques, for the design of functional materials (peptide drugs and organic semiconductors, respectively). There will be considerable training in the use of computational chemistry and data-driven (machine learning) approaches. You will be part of a research team of Research Associates and PhD students. Both projects are tightly linked to making synthesis predictions. These predictions will then be tested in novel synthesis and measurements on the resulting compounds, during the time period of the PhD. Though the projects are mainly theoretical / computational, there is scope to get involved in the experiments. 

The position is available to candidates holding, or about to hold, a Masters degree in Chemistry, Physics or Materials, or in a related field if the applicability of the experience can be demonstrated. A background in one of the following is desirable, but not essential, as full training in the required techniques will be provided: quantum chemistry / electronic structure theory, computer programming, experience of the specific research area of the projects. In the group we have a strong focus on modern research software engineering, with industry best practices. 

Interested applicants are encouraged to contact Dr Jarvist Moore Frost (jarvist.frost@imperial.ac.uk) by email, describing their interest in the field and any prior research experience along with a curriculum vitae (CV). 

Please see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N-jxP1Zp_wY5iSttc1X7JVxsCnbFomiC4WtLTiMTWiA/edit?usp=sharing for more detail about the research team and proposed projects. 

Funding notes

Full funding is available for UK Home students. 

Applicants should clearly state how they are eligible for Home fee status, for example through UK citizenship or because they hold Settled Status. More information about fee status can be found here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/fees-and-funding/tuition-fees/fee-status/).

PhD Studentship in Chemical Biology

Enzymatic Synthesis of Peptide Therapeutics

Imperial College, London

Applications are invited for a four-year PhD studentship funded by the European Research Council (ERC) project Enzymatic Methods for Peptide Synthesis (EZYPEP). The student will be based in the Department of Chemistry, Molecular Sciences Research Hub, Imperial College, under the supervision of Professor Jason Micklefield. Tuition fees will be covered and you will receive a tax-free stipend set at the UKRI-London rate (£22,780 2025-26) from September 2026.

Peptides are essential in life and are widely used as therapeutic agents, vaccines, biomaterials and in other important applications. Currently there are more than 80 peptide drugs approved world-wide, with many more in clinical trials, including essential antibiotics, antiviral and anticancer agents as well as treatments for diabetes. Most peptides are produced by solid phase peptide synthesis and related chemical methods that are outdated, problematic to scale-up, require large amounts of deleterious reagents and solvents that are damaging to the environment. In this PhD project we will address this problem by developing novel enzymatic methods for more sustainable, cleaner and scalable peptide assembly. The project will focus on developing next generation enzymatic peptide assembly technology that can deliver valuable pharmaceuticals ranging from small peptide drugs through to larger antibody drug conjugates (ADC). The PhD research programme will include: (i) using bioinformatics approaches to discover new ligases and other enzymes from nature, that facilitate peptide assembly and functionalisation; (ii) developing directed evolution approaches to improve the activity and substrate scope of the enzymes for peptide assembly; (iii) optimising processes for producing target peptides using novel separation methods to isolate peptide products.

Training will be provided in organic chemistry and biochemistry, including protein engineering, directed evolution, enzyme characterisation (X-ray crystallography and AI based modelling) and enzyme assays. Candidates are not expected to have expertise in all these areas at the outset; above all, scientific curiosity, and a desire to work in a multidisciplinary environment are most important. Candidates with a degree in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biological Sciences or a related science, who also possess a desire to do cutting edge research at the Chemistry-Biology interface are encouraged to apply. Applicants should have, or expect to achieve, at least a 2.1 honours degree or a master’s in a relevant science related discipline. Applications including a brief cover letter, CV (no page limit), and the names of at least two referees should be sent by email to j.micklefield@imperial.ac.uk with the subject heading EZYPEP PhD.

Examples of related research and links from the Micklefield lab:

Cryptic enzymatic assembly of peptides armed with β-lactone warheads.  Xu et al. Nature Chem Biol 2024, 20, 1371–1379. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-024-01657-7

Enzymatic synthesis of peptide therapeutics. Xu & Micklefield Nature Chem Biol 2024, 20, 1256–1257. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-024-01658-6

 Discovery, Characterisation and Engineering of Ligases for Amide Synthesis. Winn et al Nature 2021, 593, 391–398. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03447-w

Merging Enzymes with Chemocatalysis for Sustainable Amide Bond Synthesis. Bering et al Nature Commun. 2022, 13, 380. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28005-4

Programmable late-stage C−H bond functionalization enabled by integration of enzymes with chemocatalysis. Craven et al. Nature Catalysis, 2021, 4, 385–394.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-021-00603-3

https://www.micklefieldlab.chemistry.manchester.ac.uk

https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/j.micklefield

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPUNhcfKtKU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwvvTEa0ehk