Huddersfield University has landed a £1m deal to train the next generation of DNA scientists.
A new Centre for Evolutionary Genomics at the university will train specialists in a field that uses the latest DNA science to delve into evolutionary history – from the origins of animals to the spread of modern humans.
Prof Martin Richards, a leading archaeogeneticist, is heading an inter-disciplinary team at the university that will form the Centre.
The award has been made by funding body the Leverhulme Trust under its new doctoral scholarships scheme – a major initiative designed to foster new generations of PhD researchers at UK universities.
Huddersfield is one of 14 universities to receive funding under the first round of the scheme. Over five years, a total of 15 PhD candidates will carry out wide-ranging research under the supervision of Prof Richards and his colleagues. Two post-doctoral researchers will also be appointed.
Working with Prof Richards in the centre are fellow archaeogeneticist Dr Maria Pala, Dr Martin Carr, who researches the early stages of animal evolution, and forensic scientist Dr Stefano Vanin, a world authority on the use of insect evidence in fields that include the investigation of mummified bodies.
The first cohort of five PhD students will be recruited in the next few months and will begin their fully-funded doctoral research in October. Over succeeding years they will be joined by two further groups of five.
The new centre is a result of a major transformation in evolutionary studies that has taken place over the past decade, resulting from the development of new DNA sequencing technologies, according to Prof Richards.
DNA, of course, is used extensively to solve crimes but also to trace ancestry.
Prof Richards has made a series of discoveries about the migration of prehistoric peoples across the world, in regions that include the Near East, Africa and Europe.
The focus of the research topics carried out by the centre will extend from the origins of multicellular organisms to the prehistoric peopling of Atlantic Europe. In several projects, the centre will focus on both contemporary genetic variation in this region and DNA from human and animal remains.
The Leverhulme Trust said its new doctoral scholarships scheme was responding to concerns that the worries about debt might discourage graduates from undertaking doctorates.
Trust director Prof Gordon Marshall said: “It is to be hoped that this first round of awards, modest though it is in terms of overall graduate student numbers, will kick-start a solution to the still unresolved problem of how adequately to fund graduate studies in the United Kingdom.”
