Welcome

Welcome to the EPSRC-Pharma Synthesis Network website.

The Network is a unique collaboration bringing together the relevant government sponsored scientific funding agency, the EPSRC, and the three largest UK-based Pharmaceutical Research companies, AstraZeneca, Glaxo SmithKline and Pfizer.  The main objective is to maintain and strengthen support for synthetic organic chemistry research, which underpins R&D in the pharmaceutical industry.

The focus of the programme is the sponsorship and support of organic chemistry PhD studentships. The studentships are jointly funded by the EPSRC and the collaborating companies and are awarded on the basis of competitive review of proposals submitted by academics from UK universities. Initially the programme was a 2-year pilot that will be extended to a 4th year in 2010.  The first 15 studentships started in October 2007 and a further 15 commenced in October 2008.  Twelve more studentships are available to start in October 2009, constituting a total of 42 students from 31 research groups, and representing 18 university departments.

Through this new way of funding research at graduate level we hope to create a model of industry and research council collaboration to fund areas of research vital to the UK economy, in a way that provides students with excellent training opportunities enabling them to reach their full potential, and enables UK academia to produce world-class research..

For further information about the programme, contact Gareth Buchanan at EPSRC mailto:Gareth.Buchanan@epsrc.ac.uk