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Fully-funded PhD studentships with the Centre are now available!

The Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine is a multi-disciplinary centre established by the University of Cambridge in 2020 to develop pioneering AI machine learning (ML) technologies that will transform biomedical science, medicine and healthcare.

With six fully-funded PhD studentships available, this is our call to the best and brightest minds to join us in pushing back the frontiers of healthcare-focused ML and bioscience. Please read this advert carefully and note the stages of the process before taking any action.

As an elite group nested in a world-class university, CCAIM presents an extraordinary opportunity for PhD students to make a big impact in a cutting-edge field. If you fit our criteria, we encourage you to apply – wherever you are in the world!

Why join CCAIM?

• Interdisciplinary – The Centre’s expertise is broad and deep, stimulating cross-disciplinary research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) for medicine, biomedical science and healthcare. Our team comprises a unique coalition of leading Cambridge scientists, clinicians, medical researchers, geneticists, computational biologists, data scientists, policy leaders, and biostatisticians. We host researchers from a variety of backgrounds and sectors – virtually and in-person – to break the barriers between machine learning, AI, and biomedicine. Our thoroughly interdisciplinary methods are leading to the discovery of new links and causal relationships among clinical data, genetic data, proteomic data, metabolic data and more.
• Creative – Artists and writers are frequently lauded as “creatives”, and rightly so because they use their imagination and talent to communicate new visions for the future. We believe engineers and mathematicians are equally creative – building tools and systems that transform the world we live in. Our researchers whole-heartedly believe the AI sector is generating the most creative jobs on earth and are driven by a desire to elevate young and diverse leaders interested in shaping the future.
• Revolutionary – AI and ML have the potential to turbocharge medical discovery and revolutionize personalised healthcare delivery, including the administration of treatments over time and the way in which clinical trials are conducted. Our Centre is actively producing novel algorithms, methods and systems for biomedical discovery, omics analytics, precision medicine, and next-generation adaptive clinical trials.
• World-renowned – Our leadership team is made up of top researchers in the field from leading universities around the globe. As a researcher with the Centre you will be invited to regular roundtable days and seminars focused on bringing interested Cambridge scientists and clinicians together with national and international leaders and industry partners. Together, we will identify and formalise problems, produce consensus white papers on the basis of the emerging ideas, and establish our group as the nationally and internationally recognised think tank for AI in medicine.

What does CCAIM offer?

What are we looking for?

We are seeking the brightest minds in the world. Competition for these studentships will be fierce, so at the very least you should hold (or be predicted to achieve) the equivalent of a first-class undergraduate degree with honours at a world-class academic institution.

We are looking for two distinct types of candidates, both requiring a very particular set of skills:

1. Candidates with prodigious quantitative skills, developed during a degree in a quantitative subject such as engineering, computer science, mathematics. Your mathematics must be excellent, of course, with experience in ML a distinct plus. As such, you will be pushing to achieve breakthroughs in machine learning, which will ultimately enable cascading breakthroughs in bioscience and healthcare.

2. Candidates with exceptional prowess in bioscience – with a strong quantitative aspect – developed during a degree in a subject such as biophysics, microbiology, cell or molecular biology, computational biology, or genetics. As such, you will be pushing to achieve breakthroughs in bioscience and healthcare, powered by the world’s most advanced, bespoke ML methods.

Your supervisors will work with you, providing private tuition customised to develop the additional skills that you need while also building on your strengths.

Key details – please read carefully!

The Centre is running two initial application rounds:

Round One Deadline: 1 December 2021 at 11:59pm GMT.

Round Two Deadline: 1 April 2022 at 11:59pm GMT.

Our PhDs are fully-funded but applicants wishing to apply for other sources of funding too should take into consideration the following deadlines:

Gates US funding: 13 October 2021

All other funding: 6 January 2022

More information on applying for funding can be found here: Funding | Postgraduate Admissions

Application process

Each of our studentships will be based in one of several University of Cambridge schools – the School of Clinical Medicine, School of Physical Sciences, School of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, or the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge (PhD studentships at the Sanger will be administered through the University of Cambridge). 

This is a rolling application process, and when the six PhD studentships are allocated and confirmed, recruitment will close. To make an initial application to the centre, please first fill out the form below and someone from the centre will contact you in due course. We will arrange interviews with selected candidates. After interviews, we will make our final choices and then we will make conditional offers of funding to those successful candidates.

These offers of funding are conditional on the candidate being officially accepted as an eligible PhD candidate by the University of Cambridge. In practical terms, this means that after our conditional offers are made, those successful candidates will then be asked to apply via the formal University of Cambridge system. For a description of that formal application process, see the information on the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics website.

The absolute deadline for formal applications is 16 May 2022.

To be clear, you can make a formal application at any time, paying the required £75. But we would prefer it if you would express your interest first through the CCAIM website, using the form below. We will inform you later in the process if you subsequently need to make a formal application.

Open House 2021

Want to meet us before you apply? On 15 November, we will be hosting our first Open House for prospective PhD students. The virtual afternoon is for prospective students and interested parties to learn about the Centre’s PhD opportunities and upcoming research projects. There will be opportunities to meet our Directors, learn about the application process, and hear from current students. Registration is now open.

Interested? Submit an initial application!

Please fill out the form using the link below. Please note that the embedded form may not be compatible with mobile or tablet devices, or with certain browsers – please access the form here if it is unavailable below. Good luck!