phd funding essex

Postgraduate Funding

Iser phd scholarships.

If you are dreaming of doing a PhD with us but are worried about how you can afford it then our new ISER scholarships might be the answer for you.

• SENSS Doctoral Training Programme  (DTP)
• If you are interested in biosocial research previously provided through the Soc-B Centre for Doctoral Training you can now apply for this studentship through the SENSS DTP, see the Health, Well-being and Social  Care theme. Visit the Soc-B pages for information on the current SOC-B students and supervisors.

Taught and research degrees

Supervision and teaching from leading academics

Fully-funded studentships through our Doctoral Training Centre

How to apply

A step by step guide

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PhD Finance

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Entry requirements

Fees and funding.

• What's next?

Global financial markets are facing an era of unprecedented upheaval. Just 10 years ago the world was beginning to recover from the financial crash of 2008, but now world markets must recover from a health pandemic that has driven national economies to the brink of collapse. Now more than ever, the finance sector needs decisive leadership and fresh thinking to navigate the crisis and the “new normal” that will emerge in the post-pandemic era.

Our PhD Finance gives you the opportunity to specialise in a wide range of areas such as:

• financial econometrics
• behavioural finance
• corporate finance
• international finance
• portfolio and risk management
• commodity markets
• asset pricing
• financing of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

You study at Essex Business School (EBS) at our Colchester Campus . We are the largest department at the University of Essex and one of the most respected finance groups in the UK. We are a business school with an international outlook and our doctoral students join us from all over the world.

The University of Essex is home to a number of cutting-edge financial research centres and institutes, where academics across disciplines and departments come together to collaborate around a common theme, often engaging with external partners at a national and international level. The Essex Finance Centre (EFiC) works with leading financial services firms and public sector organisations, governments and policy institutions to produce work that makes real-world impact across the globe. The Essex Centre for Macro and Financial Econometrics brings together academic and industry expertise from inside and outside the University of Essex to research and help solve important issues in financial markets.

In addition within Essex Business School our Finance Group is one of the largest groups of finance researchers in the UK. Their research has been cited in the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve and is relevant to real people's lives. Members join the group from all over the world, including Greece, Italy, Spain, China, India and Mauritius and bring with them a wealth of knowledge and expertise.

Professor Neil Kellard , Dean of Essex Business School and member of the Finance Group, carries out research which supports developing countries through forecasting commodity prices. By modelling the effects of different causes, such as natural disasters, his research helps to find solutions to ease the impact of price changes for commodities such as energy and food. Professor Jerry Coakley is an active researcher and teaches as part of the group. His research is extremely topical as he studies the rise in crowdfunding and its impact on the way new and fledgling SMEs finance themselves. Many entrepreneurs may find the big banks turn them away or simply charge too much, leading them to turn to the public to help them crowdfund their way to business success.

Once a year, our doctoral students have the opportunity to present their work at our PhD conference.

You can choose to study on a full-time or part-time basis. You may also be eligible for a PhD scholarship .

If you would like to undertake a doctoral degree in finance but do not have a Masters, you may want to look at our integrated PhD Finance .

• Ranked in the top 200 for Accounting and Finance in the QS World University Rankings by Subject (2022).
• Our Finance Group is one of the largest groups of finance researchers in the UK
• Our research has been cited in the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve

Our expert staff

At Essex Business School, you benefit from world-class supervision and research training conducted by our senior academic staff such as Professor Claudia Girardone . Claudia is a Professor of Banking and Finance at Essex Business School and is also the Director of the Essex Finance Centre (EFiC) and the School's Director of Research. Professor Girardone has published over 50 articles on various aspects of banking and finance in books and peer-reviewed international journals and is currently on the editorial board of several journals. Her research focuses on banking sector performance and stability, bank corporate governance, the industrial structure of banking and access to finance.

Our department boasts eight research centres across our two campuses. Dr Louise Nash and Director of Postgraduate Research at Essex Business School oversees and leads the provision of our graduate research programmes and ensures that we create an environment where our doctoral students can flourish as researchers in a thriving and mutually supportive PhD community.

Louise is a lecturer in Management and Marketing and completed her PhD Management at Essex. She has extensive management and marketing experience which has influenced her research interests – these focus on interpretative, qualitative studies of the lived experience of work, including: the spatial and temporal rhythms of everyday life; the culture, aesthetics and symbolism of organisational life; gender in the workplace and exploring and developing sensory and embodied methods for researching organisations.

You work with two supervisors during your studies. They provide guidance and support to help you achieve your individual research goals, develop your research topic and create a personalised training plan. You meet with your supervisors at least once a month and are usually required to submit work before for feedback. Twice a year, you have a supervisory board meeting to discuss your progress and agree your plans for the next six months.

As well as supporting you to complete your thesis, your supervisors can help you to plan your career development. Our academics often co-author publications with doctoral students and can help you to develop the transferable skills needed for the jobs market.

Take a look at our staff pages to find out more about our areas of supervision.

Specialist facilities

PhD Finance is based at our Colchester Campus , in the UK's first zero-carbon business school building, reflecting our commitment to sustainability and business ethics; we are a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME).

You have access to excellent research facilities , such as:

• a Bloomberg virtual trading floor
• access to databases such as Bloomberg, Compustat, Passport GMID, Bankscope and Datastream
• e-book finance and business packages to support part-time and distance learning (including Ebrary, NetLibrary, Oxford Scholarship Online, Palgrave Connect and SpringerLink)
• PC access and a quiet place for conducting research in our PhD study area
• space to meet with students for our Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) in our GTA pods
• final year students receive office space to encourage successful thesis completion
• group-working space in our stunning winter garden
• Bonds café with adjacent sun terrace
• study skills support for postgraduate students

Our Bloomberg virtual trading floor facility features 12 Bloomberg Terminals with access to the Bloomberg financial and real-time data feed. This state-of-the-art, hands-on facility is particularly useful to finance students. It gives you the opportunity to learn essential portfolio management skills using the same tools used by traders and business analysts worldwide and also helps you to learn how to model financial data in a practical setting based on the live financial markets.

Our Colchester building is less than a ten- minute walk from the University library and the Silberrad Student Centre.

Across the road from our building, buses take you to Colchester town centre and train station, where you can take trains directly to London. London Stansted airport is just over an hour away, providing connections to mainland Europe.

Your future

Our PhD programmes are designed to foster the business leaders and researchers of the future who use creativity, innovation and ethical awareness to meet the many challenges facing the international business world.

Our doctoral graduates have secured roles in academia at some of the best international universities, as well as organisations in the public and private sectors. Recent examples include careers with:

• Bristol University
• University of Southampton
• University of St Andrews
• Xiamen University
• South China University

Our University Student Development Careers Services are on hand to provide careers advice and help you make the most of your Essex experience. You will also have access to CV workshops, one-to-one advice and career resources.

“My PhD has helped me to develop both academic and practical business skills through an internship at asset management company Invesco. The University’s library provides instant access to databases and journals and my supervisors are knowledgeable and supportive. Whenever I’ve had a question, I’ve found the School’s Student Services Team friendly and helpful.” Nima Zarrabi, PhD in Finance

UK entry requirements

International & eu entry requirements.

We accept a wide range of qualifications from applicants studying in the EU and other countries. Get in touch with any questions you may have about the qualifications we accept. Remember to tell us about the qualifications you have already completed or are currently taking.

Sorry, the entry requirements for the country that you have selected are not available here. Please select your country page where you'll find this information.

English language requirements

Course structure.

A research degree doesn't have a taught structure, giving you the chance to investigate your chosen topic in real depth and reach a profound understanding. In communicating that understanding, through a thesis or other means, you have a rare opportunity to generate knowledge. A research degree allows you to develop new high-level skills, enhance your professional development and build new networks. It can open doors to many careers.

We understand that deciding where and what to study is a very important decision for you. We'll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities as described on our website and in line with your contract with us. However, if we need to make material changes, for example due to significant disruption, we'll let our applicants and students know as soon as possible.

Components are the blocks of study that make up your course. A component may have a set module which you must study, or a number of modules from which you can choose.

Each component has a status and carries a certain number of credits towards your qualification.

The modules that are available for you to choose for each component will depend on several factors, including which modules you have chosen for other components, which modules you have completed in previous years of your course, and which term the module is taught in.

Modules are the individual units of study for your course. Each module has its own set of learning outcomes and assessment criteria and also carries a certain number of credits.

In most cases you will study one module per component, but in some cases you may need to study more than one module. For example, a 30-credit component may comprise of either one 30-credit module, or two 15-credit modules, depending on the options available.

Modules may be taught at different times of the year and by a different department or school to the one your course is primarily based in. You can find this information from the module code . For example, the module code HR100-4-FY means:

COMPONENT 01: COMPULSORY

Research skills are critical to a postgraduate research degree, regardless of the topic you are exploring. This module will reinforce the research methods and skills developed through your previous study and will address philosophical issues underlying management and business research and explain how to select research strategies and designs. It will offer a comprehensive view of methods of data collection and analysis to support the quality and value of research outcomes.

View Essex Business School - Research on our Module Directory

COMPONENT 02: COMPULSORY

This module aims to give first year PhD students an up-to-date and thorough introduction to a range of state-of-the-art methods used in published financial econometrics literature. You’ll also gain an understanding of core methodology and empirical practice of modern financial econometrics, using statistics, mathematical skills, and real-life data.

View Research Methods in Financial Econometrics on our Module Directory

PhD Finance follows a 'three paper' thesis, where you produce three research articles, framed by an introduction and conclusion. Your supervisors will support you to submit these papers to conferences and for publication in international journals, so you can begin to build your international research portfolio well before graduation. You benefit from strong industry links with organisations such as Invesco Perpetual and HSBC. Many of our students have gained internships with international banking institutions and have collaborated with local organisations as part of their PhD.

You begin your studies by meeting with your supervisors and undertaking an intensive induction programme. You attend advanced research methods training and undertake compulsory modules tailored to your individual research needs.

Throughout your PhD, you have regular meetings with your supervisors. You are often asked to write up your ideas or reading notes to help establish good writing practices. By the end of your first year of research, you should have a solid understanding of the key debates in your field and have defined your research questions, outlining your original contribution to knowledge. Our finance students are also expected to have made substantial progress on their first research paper. Those studying via the integrated PhD route (or 1+3) will have completed an additional year to obtain a Masters before beginning their research.

In your second year, you are likely to finalise the design of your own research project and either collect primary data, or access and analyse large scale datasets. You may also make progress on your second research paper. You receive regular feedback on your ideas and findings from your supervisors and are encouraged to develop your own research ideas independently during this year. If you are undertaking fieldwork in another location, your supervisors will still be in touch via email or Skype.

In your final year, you continue to analyse your own research data and further refine your original contribution to knowledge. You will collate your work into a approximately 50-80k words thesis. Our finance students are also expected to make substantial progress on their third research paper.

You may attend a number of conferences in your final year to test out your research findings and thesis on an international stage. Your attendance may be funded by Essex Business School. As well as advising on how to prepare your thesis for examination, your supervisors can advise on future career plans in academia or industry.

Dissertation

Creating a 50-80k word thesis is a significant task. To help you finalise your PhD and produce high quality doctoral research, we have a number of support mechanisms.

You undertake a progress board every six months, where you, your supervisors and an independent chair mark your progress and set objectives for the next period. You are also encouraged to take part in peer group debates and discussions.

Our full-time doctorates are 36 month programmes. At the end of this time, you may be allowed up to 12 months to finish writing up your PhD.

Once you have submitted your thesis, you will be asked to attend a viva voce examination with examiners from within and outside of the University. A viva voce examination usually takes place within three months of submission of thesis.

Home/UK fee

£4,712 per year

International fee

£17,900 per year

Fees will increase for each academic year of study.

Masters fees and funding information

Research (e.g. PhD) fees and funding information

What's next

We hold Open Days for all our applicants throughout the year. Our Colchester Campus events are a great way to find out more about studying at Essex, and give you the chance to:

• tour our campus and accommodation
• find out answers to your questions about our courses, graduate employability, student support and more
• talk to our Fees and Funding team about scholarship opportunities
• meet our students and staff

If the dates of our organised events aren’t suitable for you, feel free to get in touch by emailing [email protected] and we’ll arrange an individual campus tour for you.

2024 Open Days (Colchester Campus)

• Saturday 15 June 2024 - June Open Day
• Saturday 21 September 2024 - September Open Day
• Saturday 26 October 2024 - October Open Day

You can apply for this postgraduate course online . Before you apply, please check our information about necessary documents that we'll ask you to provide as part of your application.

We encourage you to make a preliminary enquiry directly to a potential supervisor or the Graduate Administrator within your chosen Department or School. We encourage the consideration of a brief research proposal prior to the submission of a full application.

We aim to respond to applications within four weeks. If we are able to offer you a place, you will be contacted via email.

For information on our deadline to apply for this course, please see our ‘ how to apply ' information.

Visit Colchester Campus

Set within 200 acres of  award-winning  parkland - Wivenhoe Park  and located two miles from the  historic city centre of Colchester – England's oldest recorded development. Our Colchester Campus is also easily reached from London and Stansted Airport in under one hour.

Virtual tours

If you live too far away to come to Essex (or have a busy lifestyle), no problem. Our 360 degree virtual tour allows you to explore the Colchester Campus from the comfort of your home. Check out our accommodation options, facilities and social spaces.

Exhibitions

Our staff travel the world to speak to people about the courses on offer at Essex. Take a look at our list of exhibition dates to see if we’ll be near you in the future.

At Essex we pride ourselves on being a welcoming and inclusive student community. We offer a wide range of support to individuals and groups of student members who may have specific requirements, interests or responsibilities.

The University makes every effort to ensure that this information on its programme specification is accurate and up-to-date. Exceptionally it can be necessary to make changes, for example to courses, facilities or fees. Examples of such reasons might include, but are not limited to: strikes, other industrial action, staff illness, severe weather, fire, civil commotion, riot, invasion, terrorist attack or threat of terrorist attack (whether declared or not), natural disaster, restrictions imposed by government or public authorities, epidemic or pandemic disease, failure of public utilities or transport systems or the withdrawal/reduction of funding. Changes to courses may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will also keep students informed appropriately by updating our programme specifications . The University would inform and engage with you if your course was to be discontinued, and would provide you with options, where appropriate, in line with our Compensation and Refund Policy.

The full Procedures, Rules and Regulations of the University governing how it operates are set out in the Charter, Statutes and Ordinances and in the University Regulations, Policy and Procedures.

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Research degrees

Apply online.

Apply now to study for one of our postgraduate courses. Remember to check all the application requirements and documents needed before you apply.

We are currently inviting applications for two funded three-year PhD scholarships.

One in the field of Social Work , and one in the field of either Mental Health, Professional Education or Social studies of Health.

ESRC Studentships - Update

All ESRC funded PhD studentships for academic year 2016 intake have already been awarded. For academic year 2017 intake new application processes are being developed. Information on the new procedures will be updated in due course.

Masters courses associated with doctoral pathways

• MSc Health Research
• MA Health and Organisational Research

PhD, MPhil, Masters by Dissertation

We offer research degrees (PhD, MPhil, Masters by Dissertation) across a range of clinical and non-clinical areas of specialism and we invite applications from all potential students interested in the following areas:

• Health Studies
• Health and Organisational Research
• Health Research
• Public Health
• Social Policy
• Applied Psychology (PhD and MPhil only)
• Nursing Studies
• Occupational Therapy
• Speech and Language Therapy

You can also see our staff research interests on the individual staff profiles . If you are looking to carry out research in a different area to those listed, please contact us to discuss this further.

Research supervision

We provide supervision for postgraduate research at the following three levels:

Supervisory arrangements for PhDs typically involve dual supervision: a principal supervisor with whom you have frequent contact and a secondary supervisor. We draw upon supervisory expertise in clinical areas, research methodologies, social sciences and management systems. You may register to study full-time (normally three years) or part-time (six years).

The MPhil may be studied two years full-time or four years part-time. The same supervisory and other arrangements as described for PhD students apply. The MPhil may be studied two years full-time or four years part-time.

Masters (MSc) by Dissertation

If you are an MSc by Dissertation student, you have one principal supervisor who has a particular interest in your area of work and, as appropriate, the supervisor may be supported by the input of an additional adviser. If you require research training you should expect to be able to attend a core research methods course (although you are not expected to produce assessed work for the course). You are also welcome to participate in and present work at the School seminar series. You can study the Masters by Dissertation in one year full-time or two years part-time.

Please note : It is the policy of the University to register all PhD students initially as MPhil/PhD students. Assuming progress is satisfactory, confirmation of PhD study normally occurs in the first half of the second year for full-time students or in the second half of the third year for part-time students.

Entry requirements and the application process

How do i choose a supervisor.

See our staff research interests to find out what specific areas of interest we cover. We welcome preliminary enquiries through the Graduate Administrator . We encourage a brief research proposal prior to the submission of a full application.

Making an application

To make a full application, you will need to:

• complete the University's online application form
• pass the letter to referees (.docx) and entrance requirements (.pdf) to two referee(s) of your choice. Fill in your name, address and degree you have applied for at the bottom of each referee letter. We require one reference for taught Masters applications and two references for all other research degree applications.
• provide details of your qualifications and work experience, a separate CV is acceptable

It is advisable to contact your referees before sending the letters in case they are unable to write on your behalf. We are not able to process your application until your references have been received. If, at the time of applying, you are in the final stages of another course, please ensure that you inform us of your result when known.

Application checklists

• PhD applications (.pdf)
• MPhil and MSc Dissertation applications (.pdf)

Interview process

As part of the decision making process, applicants will be required to participate in an interview before a formal offer is made.

• To assess your suitability to undertake the programme
• To meet your potential supervisor(s)
• To provide an opportunity to discuss your proposed research in greater detail
• To answer any question you may have about the programme and university

Research training, professional development and support

Transferable employability skills for PhD graduates are critical, as they enable you to work effectively within industry as well as academia. Proficio is designed to provide you as doctoral researcher with unique opportunities to acquire a set of specialist professional skills and deepen and expand your subject knowledge, at all stages of your career.

You can use Proficio to search and book onto a range of courses available across our campuses. You can develop your research skills, manage your PhD, develop your career potential, and meet and collaborate with students and staff. Improve your career prospects and challenge yourself as you work towards completing your doctorate.

School events

There are also many events and seminars run by the School, and by other departments within the University, which are not only a great way to network but also share your research. We encourage all research students to present at the departmental seminars.

The annual research student conference, which takes place in the summer term, gives all research students the opportunity to present their work to staff and fellow students.

The University's Learning and Development Unit also offer a comprehensive programme of development courses.

A number of student scholarships and funding opportunities are available.

For further information please contact:

Senior Student Administrator

University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park

• Colchester CO4 3SQ

Telephone +44 (0)1206 873375

Email [email protected]

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Four from MIT named 2024 Knight-Hennessy Scholars

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MIT senior Owen Dugan, graduate student Vittorio Colicci ’22, predoctoral research fellow Carine You ’22, and recent alumna Carina Letong Hong ’22 are recipients of this year’s Knight-Hennessy Scholarships. The competitive fellowship, now in its seventh year, funds up to three years of graduate studies in any field at Stanford University. To date, 22 MIT students and alumni have been awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarships.

“We are excited for these students to continue their education at Stanford with the generous support of the Knight Hennessy Scholarship,” says Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development. “They have all demonstrated extraordinary dedication, intellect, and leadership, and this opportunity will allow them to further hone their skills to make real-world change.”

Vittorio Colicci ’22

Vittorio Colicci, from Trumbull, Connecticut, graduated from MIT in May 2022 with a BS in aerospace engineering and physics. He will receive his master’s degree in planetary sciences this spring. At Stanford, Colicci will pursue a PhD in earth and planetary sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He hopes to investigate how surface processes on Earth and Mars have evolved through time alongside changes in habitability. Colicci has worked largely on spacecraft engineering projects, developing a monodisperse silica ceramic for electrospray thrusters and fabricating high-energy diffraction gratings for space telescopes. As a Presidential Graduate Fellow at MIT, he examined the influence of root geometry on soil cohesion for early terrestrial plants using 3D-printed reconstructions. Outside of research, Colicci served as co-director of TEDxMIT and propulsion lead for the MIT Rocket Team. He is also passionate about STEM engagement and outreach, having taught educational workshops in Zambia and India.

Owen Dugan, from Sleepy Hollow, New York, is a senior majoring in physics. As a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, he will pursue a PhD in computer science at the Stanford School of Engineering. Dugan aspires to combine artificial intelligence and physics, developing AI that enables breakthroughs in physics and using physics techniques to design more capable and safe AI systems. He has collaborated with researchers from Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and DeepMind, and has presented his first-author research at venues including the International Conference on Machine Learning, the MIT Mechanistic Interpretability Conference, and the American Physical Society March Meeting. Among other awards, Dugan is a Hertz Finalist, a U.S. Presidential Scholar, an MIT Outstanding Undergraduate Research Awardee, a Research Science Institute Scholar, and a Neo Scholar. He is also a co-founder of VeriLens, a funded startup enabling trust on the internet by cryptographically verifying digital media.

Carina Letong Hong ’22

Carina Letong Hong, from Canton, China, is currently pursuing a JD/PhD in mathematics at Stanford. A first-generation college student, Hong graduated from MIT in May 2022 with a double major in mathematics and physics and was inducted into Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society. She then earned a neuroscience master’s degree with dissertation distinctions from the University of Oxford, where she conducted artificial intelligence and machine learning research at Sainsbury Wellcome Center’s Gatsby Unit. At Stanford Law School, Hong provides legal aid to low-income workers and uses economic analysis to push for law enforcement reform. She has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals, served as an expert referee for journals and conferences, and spoken at summits in the United States, Germany, France, the U.K., and China. She was the recipient of the AMS-MAA-SIAM Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research, the highest honor for an undergraduate in mathematics in North America; the AWM Alice T. Schafer Prize for Mathematical Excellence, given annually to an undergraduate woman in the United States; the Maryam Mirzakhani Fellowship; and a Rhodes Scholarship.

Carine You ’22

Carine You, from San Diego, California, graduated from MIT in May 2022 with bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and in mathematics. Since graduating, You has worked as a predoctoral research assistant with Professor Amy Finkelstein in the MIT Department of Economics, where she has studied the quality of Medicare nursing home care and the targeting of medical screening technologies. This fall, You will embark on a PhD in economic analysis and policy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She wishes to address pressing issues in environmental and health-care markets, with a particular focus on economic efficiency and equity. You previously developed audio signal processing algorithms at Bose, refined mechanistic models to inform respiratory monitoring at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, and analyzed corruption in developmental projects in India at the World Bank. Through Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow, she taught computer science to Israeli and Palestinian students in Jerusalem and spearheaded an online pilot expansion for the organization. At MIT, she was named a Burchard Scholar.

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Related Articles

Three from MIT named 2023 Knight-Hennessy Scholars

Six from MIT Named 2022 Knight-Hennessy Scholars

Carina Letong Hong named a 2022 Rhodes Scholar for China

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Buckley Public Service Scholars Program Lead Graduate Assistant 2024-2025

The Buckley Public Service Scholars program (BPSS) Carolina Center for Public Service (CCPS) provides a framework for Carolina undergraduate students committed to making a positive impact through service. BPSS challenges participants to expand their understanding of service, connect academic and community-based experiences and build their capacity to help effect change. While completing the program components, participants build portfolios reflecting their learning and unique experiences throughout North Carolina, the nation and the world.

Launched in 2003, BPSS has connected students with service and special opportunities for leadership development and community engagement. Since the program’s inception, more than 8,000 students have participated, contributing 2.3 million hours of service.

Lead Graduate Assistant for BPSS

The lead graduate assistant for BPSS will work with program planning, implementation, and evaluation. Responsibilities include:

• Facilitate BPSS orientation sessions with support of an undergraduate student leader
• Assist in the selection, training and hiring of 6-9 BPSS graduate assistants who offer skills trainings and respond to graduating senior reflections
• Support SMART Mentoring program as needed
• Coordinate the senior reflection review process for BPSS graduates in the Fall and Spring semesters
• Organize and conduct BPSS outreach events (e.g. tabling in the Union) to promote BPSS
• Assist in assessment and evaluation of BPSS program
• Monitor and respond to student emails about the program
• Review, track, and approve senior portfolios on GivePulse to confirm that they have met program requirements; follow-up with seniors, as needed
• Assist with special opportunities offered by the program (graduation in May), as needed
• Provide supplemental support and publicity for BPSS programs

Enrollment in a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate program required. This position will hybrid with both in-person and remote options expected. Should have an interest in service-learning and civic engagement. Experience with nonprofit organizations, familiarity with group facilitation, program evaluation and student leadership development are preferred. The individual must enjoy working in a collaborative environment with undergraduate students, other graduate students, and professional staff. Excellent writing, computer and organizational skills are required. Experience working with diverse communities is preferred. Must be able to work some evenings and weekends as needed.

Dates of Employment: August 2024-May 2025

Hours : 15-20 hours a week

Total Funding : $20,000

If interested, please apply by June 2nd, 2024 at https://applicationportal.ccps.unc.edu/ by logging in with your ONYEN. For questions, please contact Katelyn Bodwell at [email protected] .

Explore over 200 exciting PhD positions in diverse fields offered by the University of Turin, Italy

📢 Call for Admission to over 200 PhD Positions - 40th Cycle (2024/2025) 🎓

The University of Turin is thrilled to announce the opening of applications for quite large number of PhD positions in the 40th Cycle for 2024/2025 academic year. This is an exceptional opportunity for aspiring researchers to pursue their doctoral studies in diverse fields.

💡 Highlights:

• Assignment of doctoral scholarships funded by the University, Next Gen.EU-NRRP (National Recovery and Resilience Plan), and other funds.
• Join a vibrant academic community and contribute to cutting-edge research.
• Benefit from world-class resources, facilities, and expert supervision.
• Develop your skills and expertise in a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment.

📆 Application Deadline: 20 June, 2024, 12:00pm (noon), CET.

Several academic units will be participating in the call for PhD admission

Comparative Analysis of Institutions, Economics and Law;

Business and Management;

Complex Systems for Quantitative Biomedicine;

Law and Institutions;

Law, the Individual and the Market;

Economy "Vilfredo Pareto";

Medical Physiopathology;

Food System;

Global History of Empires;

Computer Science;

Innovation for the Circular Economy;

Humanities;

Modern Languages and Literatures;

Mathematics;

Experimental Medicine and Therapy;

Molecular Medicine;

Modeling and Data Science;

Neurosciences;

Cultural Heritage and Historical-Artistic Audiovisual and Multimedia Production;

Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences;

Archeological, Historical and Historical-Artistic Sciences;

Biological Sciences and Applied Biotechnologies;

Biomedical Sciences and Oncology;

Health Sciences: Sociology, Nursing Sciences and Rehabilitation Sciences;

Chemical and Material Sciences;

Earth Sciences;

Pharmaceutical and Biomolecular Sciences;

Psychological, Anthropological and Educational Sciences;

Veterinary Sciences for Food and Animal Safety;

Sustainable Development and Cooperation (SUSTNET);

Technologies for Cultural Heritage (Tech4Culture);

Translational Oncology

For more information and to apply:  https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/234024

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‘The scientist is not in the business of following instructions.’

Alvin Powell

Harvard Staff Writer

George Whitesides became a giant of chemistry by keeping it simple

Part of the experience series.

Leaders at Harvard in and out of the classroom tell their stories in the Experience series.

When George Whitesides started as a teenage technician in his father’s Kentucky lab in the early 1950s, the bond was immediate — and lasting.

Today one of the world’s most influential chemists , Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Research Professor, has worked on a wide array of scientific problems, shifting focus periodically to uncharted territory. Over the course of his long career — Harvard College, Cal Tech, MIT, and more than four decades as a researcher and teacher back at Harvard — he’s explored nuclear magnetic spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly, soft robotics, unconventional data storage, microfabrication, nanotechnology, and the origin of life. He has published more than 1,200 scientific articles and holds more than 100 patents, and his many honors include the National Medal of Science. He’s also known for his ability to spin discoveries into new companies, including biotech giant Genzyme, purchased in 2011 by Sanofi.

In a conversation with the Gazette, Whitesides looked back on his life and career. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Your interest in chemistry starts in your father’s lab?

I don’t know where it came from. It was always interesting to me that the world was made of atoms and how those atoms combined, and I was a good chemist from the very beginning, so studying chemistry seemed like a sensible thing to do. I assumed I would end up working in the chemical industry.

It must have been a cut above the typical teenage summer job.

It was much more boring than that. I measured the pour-point viscosity of coal tar. You heat it up and put it in a cup. The cup has a hole of calibrated size in it and this very thick liquid dribbles out of the hole. You measure how long it takes for a given amount of liquid to dribble out and record that, then you can calculate from those data pour-point viscosity. It was part of the process of producing a standardized product and was boring to do, but it was also satisfying and something a high school student could manage.

You were at Phillips Andover before enrolling at Harvard. How was that experience?

I enjoyed Andover. I had a couple of teachers who were very good. I learned how to study and I certainly learned some chemistry. It was pretty standard for students who’d done well in prep schools to get early admission to Harvard, which I got. But I was not a star student. I got advanced placement in one course, maybe analytical chemistry. I took the first hour exam and got an F. I took the second hour exam and got an F. That same thing happened for the third hour exam. I don’t remember exactly how long the string went on, but I went to the teacher and said, “What do I do to salvage this? It’s going really badly.” And he looked at me very briefly and said, “Learn the material.” That was a very useful lesson. So I went away and learned the material.

What was Harvard like in the late 1950s?

It was the usual undergraduate experience. I knew it mostly from the collection of courses that I took. I had a good time while I was here but most of the good time came from courses I took and people who took the same courses. The one woman I met would eventually become my wife, Barbara. Her brother was my roommate, arbitrarily assigned at some point.

After Harvard, you headed to Cal Tech.

I ended up in the lab of a guy named Jack Roberts, who turned out to be a perfect fit for me. He was in physical organic chemistry, which made sense. You looked at previous reactions and you learned how they went. Then, if you had a new reaction or a new process, you asked “What is it analogous to?” And you predicted that if all the pieces were the same, the reaction would probably go roughly the same way. And it often did, which made it a pretty logical discipline.

The nice thing about Roberts was that, unlike many research directors, he never told me what to do. I would come up with an idea and do the research. Then I would write a draft of a paper and send him the draft, and he would look at it, correct it — largely the grammar but sometimes the chemistry — and give it back to me. After I’d done the necessary work, I’d give it back to him. This would usually go on for a couple of cycles and then we’d send it off to the journal.

It’s easy to look back at a career and imagine that one step led to another. But when you’re living it, the next step is often not clear. Were there times when you wondered whether you should be doing something other than chemistry?

No. I thought chemistry was pretty straightforward, very general, very interesting, and a good thing to do. I was enjoying it and making some progress.

“I prefer to think that, to the extent that we’ve been successful, it’s because we do stuff that’s simple and useful and solves problems.”

Your focus has shifted periodically from one major area to another. Were those shifts intentional, evolutionary, or accidental?

It was intentional. My central point of instruction to students is this: If somebody else is working on something, don’t work on it. There’s an old saying in chemistry that if somebody else has developed something and you work on it, you are working for them. If you produce an idea and someone else works on it, they’re working for you.

An example of where this has succeeded is in something called self-assembled monolayers. There is a very highly developed chemistry focused on making and observing the smallest causal structures: nanostructures. This fits in a peripheral way with the general importance of nanoscience in making electronic components. But if there are billions of dollars being spent by industry making electronic components, why should a little university research group do that?

So we worked on an alternative way to do this without expensive equipment. We worked out a technique in which you basically take a gold film and dip it in a solution of appropriate chemical. You reliably get a monolayer film one molecule thick. That can then be manipulated using the tools of physical organic chemistry to give you very, very small structures. We’ve made structures that are a couple of angstroms wide and connected in various ways. The reason that’s important is it makes it possible for organic chemists, inorganic chemists, and biochemists to use this technique to enter nanoscience. It’s a technique that everybody can use. I’m a believer in problems and a believer in easy.

You gave a TED talk on the importance of simplicity. With so much science focused on complex problems, how did you come to that view?

Something that’s simple is easier to work with than something that is complicated, and you’re going to make more rapid progress with a simple technique than a complicated one. I don’t like competition just for the sake of competition, but in a sense it’s obvious that if you work on something somebody else is working on, then it’s a competition and you want to be making more rapid progress. But I don’t choose to compete. I choose to work on problems because I think they’re interesting and important.

Is there a philosophy there?

Yes. Do things that are easy to do rather than things that are complicated. You’ll find our laboratory is just like ordinary chemistry laboratories, while a physical chemistry laboratory that works on nanostructures has elaborate equipment that sometimes takes years to build. I don’t want to build elaborate equipment — that’s not my skill.

Is this approach part of the reason you’ve been successful?

Success is in the eye of the beholder. I prefer to think that, to the extent that we’ve been successful, it’s because we do stuff that’s simple and useful and solves problems.

You also do it frugally. You’ve talked in the past about the importance of frugal science in an era when the price tag for science is rising.

You don’t need much more than an evaporator and a beaker. You buy the chemicals you need or you make them yourself because they’re easy to make. And then, the underlying principles are the principles of physical organic chemistry, which makes it relatively easy to predict outcomes and which contributes to the simplicity. What we do is apply physical organic chemistry through techniques that we develop to solve complicated problems, problems that in other hands require complicated equipment or complicated ideas.

Receiving the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Courtesy of George Whitesides

How does idea-generation work in your lab?

We make a list of the 10 most important things we can think of. I’ll suggest specific problems and the students will come up with ways of attacking them. The initial ideas may be mostly mine, but the important ideas are often mostly the students’. The scientist is not in the business of following instructions. Students should experience coming up with an idea and pursuing it themselves.

What do we work on now? We work on the origin of life. We work on “what is magnetism” and what can you do with it? We work on a series of problems related to small structures. And we work on soft robots. Those are all areas that are important, for one or another reason, to some community in the technical world.

You’ve said that the real product of your lab is the students. Your team has generated 1,200 papers, more than 100 patents, and several commercial enterprises. Why is teaching more important than the generation of knowledge?

They’re both important, but the students go out themselves and teach, so there’s an amplification there. Students come to the group and learn a particular style — or develop their own variant of that style. Then they go off and many get academic jobs. They have students, who they teach in their own way, and it goes on from there.

“One of the wonderful things about science is it gives you an enormous scope in not only what you do, but also how you want to do it.”

You’ve had a hand in starting a number of companies and have clearly put an emphasis on making sure things get commercialized. Do you help launch a company and then step back or do you stay involved?

It’s not straightforward. You have to have an idea, you have to have a market, and you have to have people who can deal with the exigencies of a small company.

One thing that’s never been quite clear is how you take bright young people and teach them to be entrepreneurs. You may have a technology but you won’t know whether it has an application until people take your technology and pay you — or the company — to use that product. That’s not what universities do particularly well, but it is what CTOs, CFOs, and CEOs — the people who run the company — do well. So there’s an entirely different part of the story that’s important, which concerns the identification and recruitment of people who can make a small company prosper. And it can take a long time for that to happen.

There are many variables in that process. Is one more important than the others?

People ultimately run the company, but it’s as complicated a problem as doing the research. Often at a small company that is succeeding you find a good application, a good product identification, and a good CEO. And the CEO may often be the one who comes up with a product identification and all the rest. Money is also critical.

And in the end it’s important — with respect to guiding principles — that since funding for your work comes from your neighbors, a benefit goes out to them in some way?

In jobs, which provide income, or in some other way. People generally don’t like just giving away money if they’re going to get nothing in return. We have a system of taxation — and we could argue about its fairness or lack of fairness — but the fact of the matter is people prefer to see something come from their money.

Lecturing at Harvard in 2005.

File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Students are sometimes told that failure is good for learning. Do you agree?

Certainly, a failure is good for instruction. If you look at the companies we’ve started that have done well, you would find an equal number that have not prospered. Those failures often come from a bad understanding of how the market works.

We recently developed a method for storing information that doesn’t involve electronics but instead uses dyes. That was based on my sense that information storage is an extremely important area but consumes a lot of energy and is subject to hacking. I thought that if you could provide an alternative which didn’t use energy and was not subject to hacking, people would be very interested in finding applications for it. I have so far been wrong. Nobody has shown an appropriate level of interest.

Might that take time to find its application, or is it just a miss?

A lot of small companies don’t go anywhere for quite a while after they get started. When they finally do, what changed is never entirely clear.

A big question you’re working on that has resisted explanation is the origin of life. Why is this problem so difficult?

For starters, you’re not going to make bugs in a test tube, so how do you tell whether you’ve succeeded or not?

The “RNA world” is a leading hypothesis for a plausible way of going from random chemicals — basically generated in outer space and then raining on the Earth — to the components of a living organism. A prime proponent, John Sutherland , thinks that RNA came first, then the RNA somehow propagated the DNA, and you go from there. It makes perfectly respectable sense on paper but you don’t know that it actually happened that way.

We do know, though, that you can make an RNA that way. If you have pools that are acidic and have sulfur in them — because they’re near volcanic fumaroles — and then it rains on them, the rain forms other chemicals. If these pools sit on hot rocks so that there’s heat to do chemistry with, then chemistry will occur and some of it may well produce RNA. But does that mean that that’s the origin of life? Does that mean that that’s the right hypothesis? No, it doesn’t.

These are very legitimate questions and they’re good scientific questions, but there’s a difference between something that could plausibly happen and something that probably did happen.

Do you have a favorite theory?

We’re working on an approach where our preferred source of energy is lightning and we’re learning all sorts of things about chemistry going on in lightning. Instead of making lightning, we make sparks that are energetic, very hot, and have curious things associated with them. A lot of lightning strikes occur over oceans and all around the ocean there are cavities in rocks, which if they get hot, are good places to think about chemistry happening. Now, whether that is the solution to the origin of life is another question.

“My central point of instruction to students is this: If somebody else is working on something, don’t work on it.”

Have your teaching methods changed over the course of your career?

No. We do our own approach and the students, whether they’re graduate students or undergraduate students, are free to say, “I think that is an interesting way of doing things” or “That’s not for me, that’s not the kind of problem I want to solve.” One of the wonderful things about science is it gives you an enormous scope in not only what you do, but also how you want to do it.

Let’s close with the areas of science you find most interesting right now.

You can make a list of maybe 10 or 15 problems and you’ll find that each requires separate ideas to solve. I won’t make any broad generalization about what’s more interesting and what’s less interesting, but I don’t think I want to leave to my grandchildren a world which is significantly hotter than it is now. I do think that it’s a good thing to think about whether the countless stars with planets around them also have countless intelligences on them. There are a wide variety of problems that can make the list. They’re all interesting but they’re all different and it’s not obvious how to solve or even contribute to many of them.

Also in this series:

Studying ‘why women are interesting, and men are boring’

Nobel laureate Claudia Goldin recounts pioneering career spent tracing major part of U.S. workforce, economy hidden in plain sight

‘I realized that I couldn’t say no — not because of personal ambition, but given the moment.’

Harvard’s 29th president shares memories and lessons from his early life and career.

‘If you stay the same in everything you do as things around you are changing, eventually you’re going to hit a wall. You just have to adapt and evolve and change.’

Head football coach Tim Murphy has led the Crimson to nine Ivy League championships, three unbeaten seasons, and a 186-83 record.

‘I’ve never done work that I was not interested in. That is a very good reason to go on.’

Indian economist and philosopher, Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel laureate in economics, talks about his life as the son of distinguished Hindu academics and how the inequities all around him in colonial India of the 1930s would shape his intellectual destiny.

‘I wanted to warn future social movements that listening only to one’s own side can generate dangerous amounts of unrealism’

Jane Mansbridge, one of the world’s leading scholars of democratic theory talks about her “jagged trajectory” toward success.

‘I developed a sense of the enormous, great luck in managing to survive, giving me a strong feeling that I had an obligation to pay it forward’

As he prepares to retire after 52 years, Harvard Law School’s Laurence H. Tribe retraces his journey from awkward immigrant math whiz to leading constitutional law scholar and admired professor.

‘When you see death all the time, you go into this mode of increased energy and sharper focus’

Pioneering AIDS researcher Myron “Max” Essex was one of the first to propose that a retrovirus was the cause of AIDS.

‘Integrating oral health and primary care can really help the health of this nation and of the world’

Harvard School of Dental Medicine’s dean of 28 years, Bruce Donoff, steps down in January. He discusses his years in leadership and life lessons learned along the way.

‘To be horrified by inequality and early death and not have any kind of plan for responding — that would not work for me’

In the Experience series, Paul Farmer talks Partners In Health, “Harvard-Haiti,” and making the lives of the poor the fight of his life.

‘I was confused and inspired. I wanted to do everything’

The first woman to earn tenure at the GSD and the first to chair the department of architecture has made a career of making statements.

‘The greatest gift you can have is a good education, one that isn’t strictly professional’

The professor who put forward the idea of multiple intelligences talks about his adventures in learning for the Experience series.

‘What the hell — why don’t I just go to Harvard and turn my life upside down?’

Family, history, and the 1960s all helped to shape the higher ed leader, but it was illness that urged her forward.

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2024 ta excellence award winners.

Anne Converse Willkomm, Associate Dean of the Graduate College (right) presenting a Teaching Assistant Excellence Award to Zhou Wang, a PhD student in electrical engineering (left) at Graduate Student Day on June 1, 2023.

Teaching Assistant Excellence Awards are presented to graduate and professional students (master's and/or doctoral level) who serve as Teaching Assistants or Teaching Fellows (TAs/TFs) and who exhibit exemplary commitment to student learning through reflective teaching practices, creative and innovative teaching methods, academic support, leadership and a commitment to their own professional growth and development as an educator.

Graduate College Award Winners

Mike Alvaro

PhD Program in Environmental Engineering

College of Engineering

Jessica Evins

MSN Program in Nursing Education

College of Nursing and Health Professions

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Dornsife School of Public Health

Carl Furner

PhD Program in Materials Science and Engineering

Farnaz Ghashami

PhD Program in Business Administration

LeBow College of Business

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PhD Program in Economics

Smruti Gote

MS Program in Cybersecurity

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PhD Program in Epidemiology

Continuing Excellence in Teaching Assistance Award

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PhD Program in Biological Sciences

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• Washington State University
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Student receives NASA graduate fellowship

Washington State University graduate student Ian Wells has won a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities fellowship.

The highly competitive fellowship provides students with up to five years of support for early-stage space technology research as well as summer internships at one of NASA’s space centers. He is the fourth graduate student from WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering to receive the fellowship.

“Ever since I visited the NASA Ames Research Center in high school, I’ve wanted to work for NASA,” said Wells. “That is now fully realized in developing optical analysis of liquid hydrogen rocket fuel.”

Originally from Boise, Idaho, Wells came to WSU as an undergraduate. Working in the Hydrogen Properties for Energy Research lab , he led a student team that built and demonstrated a prototype to clean lunar dust from spacesuits. With their idea to use a liquid nitrogen spray to clean off the dust, the group won the prestigious Artemis Award at NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge.

As part of the project, Wells, who has had a lifelong interest in photography, created images of tiny nitrogen and dust droplets, liquid nitrogen pools, and the movement of the droplets over surfaces. The images were shared widely in the media, including on the BBC and in Smithsonian Magazine.

While Wells’ undergraduate project used boiling liquid nitrogen to clean spacesuits, he wants to better understand the science behind how the nitrogen boils in order to full optimize the moondust-busting technology.

As part of his NASA fellowship, he will use optics to better understand the physics and mechanisms of boiling hydrogen to develop better rocket fuels.

Wells hopes to work at NASA after he completes his studies and continue studying optics, cryogenics, and extraterrestrial systems development.

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