Research Community

The School of Chemistry comprises around 45 research-independent academic staff, 150 Doctoral Students and 80 Postdoctoral Researchers, including over 40% from the EU and a further 16% international.

Following the recent partnership with St Andrews University to form EaStChem, the combined Research School is one of the largest and most successful in the UK, ranked 4th in the UK by "GPA" metric and 1st in the UK by the "Research Power" metric in the 2008 RAE.

More than a quarter of our PhD students are engaged in projects which involve external collaborators, such as pharmaceutical/chemical companies or national research centres. This gives students valuable experience of working in a collaborative and often interdisciplinary team, enables them to gain a firm grasp of the context and relevance of their research, and stimulates the development of their communication and presentation skills.

As well as interacting with your own research group and supervisor, you will interact academically and socially with our wider research community through weekly seminars, training activities, research centres and events organised by the Edinburgh Chemical Society.

The College of Science and Engineering is in the front rank of UK University science and engineering groupings for research quality and research income. It is one of the largest science & engineering groupings in the UK, with over 1600 staff and over 7000 students.