The College offers support to postgraduate students from a wide range of sources, including funding from the University and/or School, industrial support, Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) and the EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). Some DTP funding is used to link to CDT subjects, thus reinforcing EPSRC priority areas. It is also used, however, to "fill in the gaps" between those research topics, to support PhD students with a desire to explore new areas of research and topics that span traditional disciplines. The majority of DTP places are allocated to Schools with EPSRC funding in: http://www.ed.ac.uk/
Chemistry
Engineering
Informatics
Mathematics and
Physics

However, DTP funding is also awarded to Schools associated more with BBRSC and NERC:
Biological Sciences and
Geosciences
This fosters the interdisciplinary research across and beyond science and engineering that is a key strategy and strength of the University.
All PhD students are encouraged to undertake training, both in the form of taught courses in specific subjects (generally associated with our CDTs, but available to DTP students) and in skills aimed at maximising:
The quality of a student's PhD study e.g.
Research Planning
Academic Writing
Publishing Strategy

A student's subsequent employability e.g.
Business and Enterprise
Designing and Delivering Lectures
Maximising your Influence at Meetings
DTP places are distributed across the College in September and decisions made at School level as rapidly as possible. Prospective students and their supervisors know the outcome no later than March of the following year.
The University's international strengths inform our strategic research objectives:
Pioneer new and emerging areas of research across the boundaries of traditional disciplines
Provide leadership on, and make advances in solving, key global research challenges
Realise the full potential of the breadth and volume of our research base
Deliver excellence with impact
Generate a cohort of future research leaders
The University also aims to increase the average number of PhD students per member of academic staff to at least 2.5 and increase our score for the citations measure in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings to at least 94/100. We are therefore recruiting the most able research students, through competitive recruitment processes. To realise all of these objectives in the postgraduate community, Schools often use DTP funding to leverage industrial, or other external funds, to foster industrial and societal impact. However, DTP places are often allocated without this form of 'matched funding', in order to balance the research impact that industrial funding promotes with the research independence and the emerging areas of research that PhD study can facilitate. Examples include:-

The EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) funding in Chemistry established a Collaborative Award in Science and Engineering (CASE award) with Pfizer, the World's largest research-based pharmaceutical company. DTP funding also helped to establish a CASE studentship with the Scottish renewables company Sunamp, in the development of low carbon energy systems.
A DTP student in Geosciences undertook an integrated geochemical and structural investigation into the controls of natural CO2 storage and leakage in the Otway Basin, Australia. The student was jointly awarded an Early Career Poster Prize at the recent UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) meeting.
A DTP student worked with the Informatics team that created the EnCore microprocessor and the associated ArcSim simulation software (both now licensed to Synopsys). Manufacturers worldwide produced over 10 billion chips with an embedded Intellectual Property (IP) processor in the 2011 financial year. ARC's processor cores from Synopsys accounted for 10% of that market. This market is growing at 10% annually.