About

Named after the ancient ocean that closed to bring together England and Scotland, IAPETUS is a partnership that joins the leading research universities of Durham, Glasgow, Heriot Watt, Newcastle, St Andrews and Stirling, together with the British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, in a united approach to doctoral research and training the next generation of leaders in the science of the natural environment.
IAPETUS is a multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP), funded and accredited by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), offering PhD students a world-class environment in which to study, encompassing:

• A range of attractive fully-funded PhD studentships;
• Supervision and support from academics and researchers that are world-leaders in their fields;
• Tailored training and development programmes;
• Placements and internship opportunities; &
• Access to a vast range of high-quality laboratories, facilities and resources.

IAPETUS’ training and research is focused around a number of interdisciplinary clusters of internationally-recognised excellence, which spans the environmental and Earth sciences:

• Global environmental change;
• Geodynamics and Earth resources;
• Carbon and nutrient cycling;
• Hazards, risks and resilience; &
• Biodiversity and ecosystem resources.

Collaboration and knowledge exchange with industry, policy-makers and other non-academic organisations is at the heart of our activities. Over 30% of our studentships are CASE awards, which involve students working in close partnership with a non-academic organisation throughout their PhD and we already have over 35 external partners supporting IAPETUS’s research, ranging from BP, to the Natural Trust for Scotland, to the Ordnance Survey.