World-Leading Doctoral Scholarships

 The scholarships are funded by St Leonard’s Postgraduate College, the home of the postgraduate community at St Andrews.

The World-Leading Scholarships are for students of exceptional ability looking to complete a doctoral degree in an area of research aligned with the University’s research strategy.

Scholarships are tenable for up to 3.5 years and cover full tuition fees for the award term as well as an annual stipend payable at the standard UK Research Council rate (the 2024-2025 annual rate is £19,237; the stipend may not increase in line with future UKRI rates). The scholarships are open to suitably qualified applicants from the UK or international.

Award holders will be expected to have completed the doctorate degree by the end of the award term. The award term excludes the continuation period and any extension periods.

The competition for the World Leading Scholarships 2025-2026 will open in mid-September 2025.

World- Leading Scholarships Supervisor Led Projects (2025-2026)

• Novel drugs against superbugs: dissecting allosteric inhibitors protein-protein of ATP phosphoribosyltransferase. (Biology and Chemistry).
• Network based analysis of Neural Processes Underlying Memory recall (Psychology and Neuroscience and Biology)
• Westerly winds overturning oceans (Earth and Environmental Sciences)
• Unlocking Earth’s volcanic record with novel computer vision approaches (Geography and Sustainable Development, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Computer Science)
• Groundwater under Antarctica: Impact of deep subglacial groundwater on Antarctica ocean circulation.(Geography and Sustainable Development and Earth and Environmental Sciences)
• Identifying novel targets for the treatment of Alzheimer’s and Motor Neuron Disease (Psychology and Neuroscience and Biology)

World-Leading Scholarships Supervisor Led Projects (2024-2025)

• Definitely maybe? Communicating uncertainty in Medicine through data comics (Computer Science and Medicine).
• India and St Andrews, c1780-1900 (History).
• Resistance to root-knot nematodes in potato for East Africa (Biology)
• The role of Calcium Carbonate in blue carbon environments (Geography and Sustainable Development, and Earth and Environmental Sciences).
• Photodynamic therapy of Diabetic foot ulcers, (Medicine, and Physics and Astronomy).

World-Leading Scholarships Student-Led Projects (2024-25)

• Greece Writes Back:Anti-fascist Receptions of Antiquity in the Literature of Occupied Greece 1941-1945 (Classics and International Relations)
• New antibiotics through in Silico guided precision molecule editing (Chemistry)
• Dynamic Marine Protected Areas (MPA) designation and management: using marine megafauna to inform mobile MPAs. (Biology and Mathematics and Statistics)
• Assessing phosphorus limitation of the mid-Proterozoic biosphere and implications to phosphorus availability in Martian environments. (Earth and Environmental Sciences)
• Environmental factors shaping variation in communication across chimpanzee communities. (Psychology and Neuroscience)

Previous years projects

World-Leading Scholarship Projects (2023-2024)

• Personalised, Adaptive, Language- based Planner for next generation Robotics (Computer Science).
• Prenatal influence on brain health and function (Psychology and Neuroscience).
• Janus cyclohexanes: A new class of nucleic acid affinity probes (Chemistry).
• Multimorbidity Dynamics in Scotland: Understanding Socioeconomic and Household Factors, and predicting disease trajectories (Computer Science).
• Novel biphotonic tolls for measuring the role of cardiomyocyte cell-to-cell heterogeneity in health and pathophysiology (Medicine).
• A source-to -sink approach to lithium and  tin mineralisation (Earth and Environmental Sciences).
• Facing Dementia: Investigating disease onset in a mouse model of Frontotemporal Dementia via Artificial Intelligence (Psychology and Neuroscience).
• The pathogen-patient intersection of Urinary Tract Infections: Understanding the biological and social basis of antibacterial resistance in east Africa using pathogen and genomic and patient social science data (Medicine).
• Modelling the dynamics of online polarisation (Mathematics and Statistics).
• Evolutionary Potential and rescue (Biology).

World-Leading Scholarship Projects (2022-2023)

• Quotative Be Like: Evolution, Development, and Culture, and Other Minds (Philosophy and Psychology and Neuroscience).
• An analysis of the impact of private Environmental, Social and Governance initiatives on corruption and organised crime in the Brazilian Amazon. (International Relations and Geography and Sustainable Development).
• Extratropical Continental Heatwaves in a Changing Climate (Earth and Environmental Sciences).
• Materials discovery and quantum phenomena in transition metal oxides through unconventional synthesis routes (Chemistry and Physic and Astronomy).
• Developing antimicrobial stewardship in primary care out-of- hours in Scotland: understanding current antimicrobial prescribing practices (Medicine).
• Sub-Saharan African Eco-Fiction: Reimagining a Sustainable Environment (Modern Languages and Geography and Sustainable Development).
• Stability and dynamics of Dirac Solitons: gravitationally bound fermion complexes (Physics and Astronomy and Mathematics and Statistics).
• The hunt for massive mystery eruptions: novel geochemical tools to interrogate the ice core archive (Earth and Environmental Sciences and Geography and Sustainable Development).
• Netting Nineteenth- Century Knowledge: Rediscovering ‘Missing’ Abundance and Biodiversity Baselines in Fisheries Research (Modern Languages and Biology).
• Perovskite dipolaritons for room-temperature quantum applications (Chemistry and Physics and Astronomy).
• Developing Novel Methods for Estimating the Abundance of Breeding Grey Seals (Biology and Mathematics and Statistics).
• Targeting carbohydrate processing enzymes in the fight against Neglected tropical diseases (Chemistry and Biology).

World-Leading Scholarship Projects (2021-2022)

• Feminist Documentary Photography and Activist Networks (Art History).
• Visualising SARS- CoV2 Fusing to Host Cells Using Single-Molecule Microscopy (Biology).
• Studying Tissue-Wide Coordination of Pulsed Contractions During Drosophila Morphogenesis (Biology and Mathematics and Statistics).
• Menstruation as a Cultural Phenomenon (Modern Languages).
• Deep Lungs: Machine Learning in Respiratory Infection (Computer Science and Medicine).
• Using Paleo- Data to Inform Scots Pine Woodland Management for Climate Change Resilience (Earth and Environmental Sciences and Geography and Sustainable Development).
• Plastic People: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Behaviour Change for Reducing Plastic Waste (Medicine, Biology, and University Museums).
• Information Cultures of the British Empire, 1880-1950 (English and History).
• Targeting Neurodegeneration: Developing New Treatments and Drug Discovery Tools (Psychology and Neuroscience and Biology).
• Developing and Measuring Antimicrobial Photodynamic Therapy (Medicine and Physics and Astronomy).
• Enhancing the Sustainability of the Primary Resource Sector: Interdisciplinary Analysis of  the Extractive Industry in Kazakhstan (Geography and Sustainable Development, and Earth and Environmental Sciences).
• Evaluating Research and Researchers: ‘Excellence in UK Academia, c.1960-1990 (History and Management)