Postgraduate research
Biological sciences
Work with a supportive team of expert academics and use the latest facilities on MPhil or PhD biological sciences research.
About
Biological Sciences at Southampton offers the latest learning and biological research facilities. 100% of our research has been rated world-leading or internationally excellent for its impact on society (REF, 2014).
Our research follows themes that focus on the causes and resolutions of some of the most substantial challenges facing humanity and the natural world today. You'll work with us on the latest scientific developments.
In our graduate school, you will also gain the broader personal and professional skills essential both for your PhD research and for your lifelong career choices.
We have a strong record of supporting postgraduate research students in this exciting and rapidly developing subject area.
We offer 2 PhD routes:
Standard route
Apply directly through the university to an advertised project, or by proposing your own PhD idea.
Doctoral partnership route
Applying through one of our doctoral training partnerships (DTP). PhD projects are advertised with a title, supervisor, remit and funding already in place. Taking a structured studentship will give you access to additional training, conferences and secondments.
Main areas of research
Our main areas of research are:
- computational and systems biology
- developmental biology
- ecology and evolution
- microbiology
- molecular and cellular biosciences
- neuroscience
- plants and food security
Similar research degree topics
Find a research project
You can either apply for a structured studentship or propose your own PhD idea.
We offer our structured studentships in partnership with these DTPs:
If there are no projects advertised currently, we still welcome enquiries to potential supervisors to discuss projects and funding options.
Advertised PhD research projects
9 advertised projects
Biological sciences
A new Green Revolution: Regulation of wheat growth in response to heat and drought
This project directly addresses the impact of climate change on food security. It will investigate how wheat plants respond to high temperature and drought using lines with altered levels of regulators of these responses. Results will be used to help develop wheat varieties that are more resilient to climate change.
Biological sciences
Breaking Rhododendron: understanding the drivers of rhododendron success
Rhododendron is destroying natural habitats across the UK and efforts are required to better control and manage its spread. This project will ask: How are rhododendron plants impacting belowground diversity and functions and will that get worse under climate change?
Biological sciences
Climate change impacts on bat-plant pollination systems
Bats are the most important pollinators within mammals, yet climatic changes can disrupt the spatio-temporal dynamics of nectar bat-plant interactions. This project will investigate the synchrony of bat-plant pollination interactions under current and future climate changes, and the economic consequences of decreasing ecosystem service caused by disruptions of those dynamics.
Biological sciences
Impacts of floral nutritional loss on pollinator community interactions
This project will use a multidisciplinary approach combining ecological surveying, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis, and network analysis, to capture the impacts of loss of nutrition, including quality and quantity of nectar and pollen nutrients, on wild pollinator trophic, competitive, and parasitic interactions, in fragmented and agriculturally dominated landscapes.
Biological sciences
Investigating the effects of environmental change on tropical montane bats
PhD opportunity to investigate the impact of environmental change on tropical montane bats in Malaysia. The project combines ecological research methods and pollen analysis to study bat community composition, pollination network, and environmental influences. Ideal for candidates with a background in tropical ecology.
Biological sciences
Molecular basis and ecological significance of Saccharomyces wine yeast interactions with microbes, plants and insects
Saccharomyces yeast is an outstanding model eukaryote for research and a workhorse of fermentations. We will use advanced techniques in microbiology, genetics, ecology and analytical chemistry to deepen our understanding of yeast’s coevolution and interactions with other organisms, how it benefits from these, and how it could be tailored for various bioprocesses.
Funding and fees
Find a funded PhD
We offer structured studentships in partnership with doctoral training centres, meaning you'll benefit from enhanced training and guaranteed funding. These studentships:
- are fully funded
- come with a maintenance grant to help towards living costs
- are open to UK and international students
Scholarships
We offer scholarships and teaching bursaries ourselves. Your potential supervisor can guide you on what is available.
If you’re an international student you may be able to apply for a scholarship from your country.
Find out more about scholarships
Fund your own PhD research project
Once you've found a supervisor, they can help you with potential funding sources. We offer match funding in some cases.
You'll need to state how you intend to pay for your tuition fees when you submit your application.
Find out more about funding your PhD
Take out a PhD loan
You can borrow up to £29,390 for a PhD starting on or after 1 August 2024. Doctoral loans are not means tested and you can decide how much you want to borrow.
Find out about PhD loans on GOV.UK
Apply for funding from a charity
You may be able to win funding from one or more charities to help fund your PhD.
2022 to 2023 entry:
| UK | International | |
|---|---|---|
| Full time | £4,596 | £24,600 |
| Part time | £2,298 | £12,300 |
2023 to 2024 entry:
| UK | International | |
|---|---|---|
| Full time | To be confirmed | £25,500 |
| Part time | To be confirmed | £12,750 |
2024 to 2025 entry:
| UK | International | |
|---|---|---|
| Full time | £4,786 | £26,100 |
| Part time | £2,393 | £13,050 |
2025 to 2026 entry:
| UK | International | |
|---|---|---|
| Full time | To be confirmed Spring 2025 | £26,100 |
| Part time | To be confirmed Spring 2025 | £13,350 |
Alumni discount
You're eligible for a 10% alumni discount on a self-funded PhD if you're a current student or graduate from the University of Southampton.
Potential supervisors
Research institutes, centres and groups
Our research institutes, centres and groups bring together specialists to share knowledge and solve problems.
Institute for Life Sciences
We bring together interdisciplinary researchers with expertise across the themes of health and medicine, living systems, disruptive life technologies, and insights through data
Ecology and Evolution
The Ecology and Evolution research group covers the interactions of species with their environment.
Microbiology
We work on topics like patient treatment regimens, catheter design and management, and surgical instrument decontamination.
Neuroscience
We work on national and global priorities of health and well-being, underpinning research in neuroscience, and age-related neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s.
Plants and Food Security
We study the response of plants to the environment at the molecular, whole plant and ecological levels. This includes interactions with nematodes, insects and microbes.
How to apply
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Choose your application route
Choose between the standard route or DTP route.
If you choose the DTP route you must apply through their website:
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Contact your potential supervisors
If you choose the standard route, email potential supervisors working within your field of interest to discuss potential PhD projects or writing your own proposal. It's best to do this well ahead of the application deadline.
You’ll find supervisors’ contact details listed with the advertised project, or you can search for supervisors in the staff directory.
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Gather your application documents
You’ll need to send us
- your CV with details of your academic record and research interests
- your academic transcript
- details of 2 current academic referees, with their institutional email addresses
- a short statement of your research interests
- IELTS or TOEFL certificate if English is not your first language
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Apply
Facilities
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Imaging and Microscopy Centre
The Imaging and Microscopy Centre is a core facility for advanced life sciences imaging at Southampton University. -
Plant growth facility
The plant growth facility provides a glasshouse and a selection of Controlled Environment Rooms (CERs) capable of housing traditional and novel plants.
Entry requirements
You'll need either:
- an upper second class honours (2:1) degree
- an equivalent set of qualifications, for example a lower second class (2:2) honours degree, plus an MSc
English language requirements
If English is not your first language, you'll need an IELTS minimum level of 6.5 with a 6.0 in writing, reading, speaking and listening. Your awarded certificate needs to be dated within the last 2 years.
Visit our English language proficiency pages to find out more about other qualifications we accept.
If you need further English language tuition before starting your degree, you can apply for one of our pre-sessional English language courses.
Programmes and durations
Research degrees have a minimum and maximum duration, known as the candidature. Your candidature ends when you submit your thesis.
Most candidatures are longer than the minimum period.
PhD programmes
| Programme | Full time | Part time |
| Biological sciences | 2 to 4 years | 3 to 7 years |
If you choose the DTP route, check their website for duration and part time or full time options:
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Study
- View all courses
- Taught postgraduate study
- Pre-sessional English courses
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Subjects
- Acoustical engineering
- Audiology
- Biomedical and medical engineering
- Civil engineering
- Every day I’m completely immersed in an environment that’s creative in all aspects
- Everything I learn feels so relevant, even If it’s a subject rooted in the past
- Maritime engineering
- Photonics and optoelectronics
- Social statistics and demography
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PhDs and research degrees
- Create your own research project
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Find a PhD project
- A missing link between continental shelves and the deep sea: Have we underestimated the importance of land-detached canyons?
- A seismic study of the continent-ocean transition southwest of the UK
- A study of rolling contact fatigue in electric vehicles (EVs)
- Acoustic monitoring of forest exploitation to establish community perspectives of sustainable hunting
- Acoustic sensing and characterisation of soil organic matter
- Advancing intersectional geographies of diaspora-led development in times of multiple crises
- Aero engine fan wake turbulence – Simulation and wind tunnel experiments
- Against Climate Change (DACC): improving the estimates of forest fire smoke emissions
- All-in-one Mars in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) system and life-supporting using non-thermal plasma
- An electromagnetic study of the continent-ocean transition southwest of the UK
- An investigation of the relationship between health, home and law in the context of poor and precarious housing, and complex and advanced illness
- Antibiotic resistance genes in chalk streams
- Being autistic in care: Understanding differences in care experiences including breakdowns in placements for autistic and non-autistic children
- Biogeochemical cycling in the critical coastal zone: Developing novel methods to make reliable measurements of geochemical fluxes in permeable sediments
- Bloom and bust: seasonal cycles of phytoplankton and carbon flux
- British Black Lives Matter: The emergence of a modern civil rights movement
- Building physics for low carbon comfort using artificial intelligence
- Building-resolved large-eddy simulations of wind and dispersion over a city scale urban area
- Business studies and management: accounting
- Business studies and management: banking and finance
- Business studies and management: decision analytics and risk
- Business studies and management: digital and data driven marketing
- Business studies and management: human resources (HR) management and organisational behaviour
- Business studies and management: strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship
- Carbon storage in reactive rock systems: determining the coupling of geo-chemo-mechanical processes in reactive transport
- Cascading hazards from the largest volcanic eruption in over a century: What happened when Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupted in January 2022?
- Characterisation of cast austenitic stainless steels using ultrasonic backscatter and artificial intelligence
- Climate Change effects on the developmental physiology of the small-spotted catshark
- Climate at the time of the Human settlement of the Eastern Pacific
- Collaborative privacy in data marketplaces
- Compatibility of climate and biodiversity targets under future land use change
- Cost of living in modern and fossil animals
- Creative clusters in rural, coastal and post-industrial towns
- Deep oceanic convection: the outsized role of small-scale processes
- Defect categories and their realisation in supersymmetric gauge theory
- Defining the Marine Fisheries-Energy-Environment Nexus: Learning from shocks to enhance natural resource resilience
- Design and fabrication of next generation optical fibres
- Developing a practical application of unmanned aerial vehicle technologies for conservation research and monitoring of endangered wildlife
- Development and evolution of animal biomineral skeletons
- Development of all-in-one in-situ resource utilisation system for crewed Mars exploration missions
- Ecological role of offshore artificial structures
- Effect of embankment and subgrade weathering on railway track performance
- Efficient ‘whole-life’ anchoring systems for offshore floating renewables
- Electrochemical sensing of the sea surface microlayer
- Engagement with nature among children from minority ethnic backgrounds
- Enhancing UAV manoeuvres and control using distributed sensor arrays
- Ensuring the Safety and Security of Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems
- Environmental and genetic determinants of Brassica crop damage by the agricultural pest Diamondback moth
- Estimating marine mammal abundance and distribution from passive acoustic and biotelemetry data
- Evolution of symbiosis in a warmer world
- Examining evolutionary loss of calcification in coccolithophores
- Explainable AI (XAI) for health
- Explaining process, pattern and dynamics of marine predator hotspots in the Southern Ocean
- Exploring dynamics of natural capital in coastal barrier systems
- Exploring the mechanisms of microplastics incorporation and their influence on the functioning of coral holobionts
- Exploring the potential electrical activity of gut for healthcare and wellbeing
- Exploring the trans-local nature of cultural scene
- Facilitating forest restoration sustainability of tropical swidden agriculture
- Faulting, fluids and geohazards within subduction zone forearcs
- Faulting, magmatism and fluid flow during volcanic rifting in East Africa
- Fingerprinting environmental releases from nuclear facilities
- Flexible hybrid thermoelectric materials for wearable energy harvesting
- Floating hydrokinetic power converter
- Glacial sedimentology associated subglacial hydrology
- Green and sustainable Internet of Things
- How do antimicrobial peptides alter T cell cytokine production?
- How do calcifying marine organisms grow? Determining the role of non-classical precipitation processes in biogenic marine calcite formation
- How do neutrophils alter T cell metabolism?
- How well can we predict future changes in biodiversity using machine learning?
- Hydrant dynamics for acoustic leak detection in water pipes
- If ‘Black Lives Matter’, do ‘Asian Lives Matter’ too? Impact trajectories of organisation activism on wellbeing of ethnic minority communities
- Illuminating luciferin bioluminescence in dinoflagellates
- Imaging quantum materials with an XFEL
- Impact of neuromodulating drugs on gut microbiome homeostasis
- Impact of pharmaceuticals in the marine environment in a changing world
- Improving subsea navigation using environment observations for long term autonomy
- Information theoretic methods for sensor management
- Installation effect on the noise of small high speed fans
- Integrated earth observation mapping change land sea
- Interconnections of past greenhouse climates
- Investigating IgG cell depletion mechanisms
- Is ocean mixing upside down? How mixing processes drive upwelling in a deep-ocean basin
- Landing gear aerodynamics and aeroacoustics
- Lightweight gas storage: real-world strategies for the hydrogen economy
- Machine learning for multi-robot perception
- Machine learning for multi-robot perception
- Marine ecosystem responses to past climate change and its oceanographic impacts
- Mechanical effects in the surf zone - in situ electrochemical sensing
- Microfluidic cell isolation systems for sepsis
- Migrant entrepreneurship, gender and generation: context and family dynamics in small town Britain
- Miniaturisation in fishes: evolutionary and ecological perspectives
- Modelling high-power fibre laser and amplifier stability
- Modelling soil dewatering and recharge for cost-effective and climate resilient infrastructure
- Modelling the evolution of adaptive responses to climate change across spatial landscapes
- Nanomaterials sensors for biomedicine and/or the environment
- New high-resolution observations of ocean surface current and winds from innovative airborne and satellite measurements
- New perspectives on ocean photosynthesis
- Novel methods of detecting carbon cycling pathways in lakes and their impact on ecosystem change
- Novel technologies for cyber-physical security
- Novel transparent conducting films with unusual optoelectronic properties
- Novel wavelength fibre lasers for industrial applications
- Ocean circulation and the Southern Ocean carbon sink
- Ocean influence on recent climate extremes
- Ocean methane sensing using novel surface plasmon resonance technology
- Ocean physics and ecology: can robots disentangle the mix?
- Ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal: Assessing the utility of coastal enhanced weathering
- Offshore renewable energy (ORE) foundations on rock seabeds: advancing design through analogue testing and modelling
- Optical fibre sensing for acoustic leak detection in buried pipelines
- Optimal energy transfer in nonlinear systems
- Optimal energy transfer in nonlinear systems
- Optimizing machine learning for embedded systems
- Oxidation of fossil organic matter as a source of atmospheric CO2
- Partnership dissolution and re-formation in later life among individuals from minority ethnic communities in the UK
- Personalized multimodal human-robot interactions
- Preventing disease by enhancing the cleaning power of domestic water taps using sound
- Quantifying riparian vegetation dynamics and flow interactions for Nature Based Solutions using novel environmental sensing techniques
- Quantifying the response and sensitivity of tropical forest carbon sinks to various drivers
- Quantifying variability in phytoplankton electron requirements for carbon fixation
- Resilient and sustainable steel-framed building structures
- Resolving Antarctic meltwater events in Southern Ocean marine sediments and exploring their significance using climate models
- Robust acoustic leak detection in water pipes using contact sound guides
- Silicon synapses for artificial intelligence hardware
- Smart photon delivery via reconfigurable optical fibres
- The Gulf Stream control of the North Atlantic carbon sink
- The Mayflower Studentship: a prestigious fully funded PhD studentship in bioscience
- The calming effect of group living in social fishes
- The duration of ridge flank hydrothermal exchange and its role in global biogeochemical cycles
- The evolution of symmetry in echinoderms
- The impact of early life stress on neuronal enhancer function
- The oceanic fingerprints on changing monsoons over South and Southeast Asia
- The role of iron in nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis in changing polar oceans
- The role of singlet oxygen signaling in plant responses to heat and drought stress
- Time variability on turbulent mixing of heat around melting ice in the West Antarctic
- Triggers and Feedbacks of Climate Tipping Points
- Uncovering the drivers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease progression using patient derived organoids
- Understanding recent land-use change in Snowdonia to plan a sustainable future for uplands: integrating palaeoecology and conservation practice
- Understanding the role of cell motility in resource acquisition by marine phytoplankton
- Understanding the structure and engagement of personal networks that support older people with complex care needs in marginalised communities and their ability to adapt to increasingly ‘digitalised’ health and social care
- Unpicking the Anthropocene in the Hawaiian Archipelago
- Unraveling oceanic multi-element cycles using single cell ionomics
- Unravelling southwest Indian Ocean biological productivity and physics: a machine learning approach
- Using acoustics to monitor how small cracks develop into bursts in pipelines
- Using machine learning to improve predictions of ocean carbon storage by marine life
- Vulnerability of low-lying coastal transportation networks to natural hazards
- Wideband fibre optical parametric amplifiers for Space Division Multiplexing technology
- Will it stick? Exploring the role of turbulence and biological glues on ocean carbon storage
- X-ray imaging and property characterisation of porous materials
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