PhD Funding and Scholarships
Postgraduate Tuition Fees for 2025/26 are detailed below.
| Home Students | International Students | |
|---|---|---|
| Both non-lab and lab based | Non-lab / lab-based | |
| Full-time | £4,780 | £14,095/£15,515 |
| Part-time | £2,393 | Not Applicable |
Write-up period – no charge for first year (full-time students) or first two years (part-time students), then £500 each subsequent year
Funded Project – Marine Pseudomonas putida as a chassis organism for production of high value commodity chemicals, Apply by 3/10/25
Primary Supervisor: Dr Nick Tucker
P. putida is tolerant to a wide variety of solvents, particularly those used by the plastics industry. It is ideally suited to the sustainable production of plastic monomers using synthetic biology approaches as an alternative to petrochemical feedstocks. This project is an industrial collaboration with a major international chemical corporation. We have previously identified efflux systems that confer resistance to various solvents used by the plastics industry and the transcriptional regulators that control their expression. The aim of this project is to disrupt these RND family efflux pumps in P. putida so that the chemical substrates for each system can be determined. This work will provide valuable insights into the prioritisation of RND efflux systems in synthetic biology based strain improvement strategies.
Candidate Requirements
This is a fully funded project for a home (UK) student with an application deadline of 3rd October 2025.
Informal Enquiries to nick.tucker@uos.ac.uk
The ideal candidate should hold, or be expected to receive, a First Class or good Upper Second-Class Honours degree in Biological Sciences, Biomedical Science, Microbiology, Biochemistry or a related discipline. A Master’s level qualification would also be advantageous but is not essential.
Where English is not your first language, we require evidence of your ability unless you can demonstrate that your previous education and qualifications have been in the English language medium. The English language requirement for study at postgraduate research level is a minimum IELTS score of 6.5 in each area.
Enquiries and Applications
Informal enquiries are welcomed and should be directed to Dr Nick Tucker nick.tucker@uos.ac.uk
KEYWORDS
Microbiology, Pseudomonas, Sustainability, Synthetic Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Biochemistry, Infectious Disease, Transcription
A CAS deposit of £5,000 is required for the UK VISA application and the University of Suffolk Admissions team will be in contact when they are ready to request this.
All members of the University of Suffolk Alumni Association are entitled to a loyalty reduction on PhD course fees. This scheme has been developed to support and encourage alumni students to progress to full or part-time postgraduate research programmes at the University. More information is available on the Alumni Postgraduate Loyalty Scheme page.
A Doctoral Loan of up to £30,301 (2025-26) is available to help eligible students with the tuition fees and/or living costs of your postgraduate doctoral study. You can apply for the full amount regardless of the actual tuition fee that you will be paying. The loan is paid directly to you in three instalments in each year of study, approximately every four months.