The Midlands Mental Health & Neuroscience PhD Programme for Healthcare Professionals (MMHN DTP at the Universities of Nottingham, Birmingham, Leicester and Warwick) has secured major new funding from Wellcome to support continued innovation of its training programme, with an intake of 5 further PHD fellows.
The funding represents a significant endorsement of the programme’s success in enabling healthcare professionals to pursue research careers in mental health and neuroscience to improve outcomes for patients, families and communities.
The renewed programme is expanding its partnership to become Midlands+, with the University of Oxford joining as a new partner institution and remains committed to developing healthcare professionals from a broad range of backgrounds, including nursing, allied health professions, psychology, pharmacy and other clinical disciplines.
The programme’s updated training framework was designed to address barriers along the clinical academic development pathway offering additional protected time and support for progression into and beyond doctoral study that will help healthcare professionals to establish sustainable clinical academic careers. It will also launch an innovative Academy Training model including pioneering responsible use of AI training companions to enhance learning, collaboration and researcher development.
Fellows will undertake ambitious, interdisciplinary research projects in mental health and brain sciences across five interlinked discovery themes that address the complexities of mental health from mechanisms, comorbidity and diagnostics to overcoming implementation barriers and responsible use of technological advances.
Professor Dorothee Auer, Programme Director, said:
“We are immensely grateful to Wellcome’s continued support that allows us to expand and further improve our bespoke research training and development for clinical academics. Our transinstitutional expert consortium is fully committed to address barriers faced by healthcare professionals to develop a research career in mental and brain health, an area recognised as one of the most pressing health challenges of our time. This programme will also contribute to address the alarming decline and persistent diversity gap in clinical academics in the UK”.
Professor Rachel Upthegrove, Programme Co-Director at University of Oxford, Department of Psychiatry said:
“We are delighted to be joining the successful renewal of the Midlands Mental Health and Neuroscience DTP programme, with generous funding from the Wellcome trust and a specific focus on health care professionals from all disciplines. This is entirely aligned to the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre: Oxford Health’s current and developing focus on playing our part to grow the regional and national research capacity needed to advance our discoveries into patient and community benefits. We look forward to working with our partners in Nottingham, Birmingham, Warwick and Leicester in this exciting new phase.”
Recruitment information for the first new cohort, due to commence in October 2027, will be shared through the programme website and partner organisations in due course.
Visit the website for more information about the Midlands+ Mental Health & Neurosciences PhD Programme for Healthcare Professionals: https://www.midlandsmhndtp.ac.uk/
