Training is integrated into your degree programme for the full time that you are with us. In the early years you will take a selection of compulsory and elective choices to establish a solid knowledge base to best complement your interests, development needs, and to help you conduct innovative and productive research at the highest level. We also want to develop your broader skills that will help you now and in your future careers. This takes the form of workshops, mini-projects, retreats and masterclasses covering a variety of domains including ethics, responsible AI, entrepreneurship, stakeholder engagement, presentation skills, and many others. The programme is flexible and will be reviewed and refined each year in partnership with students, staff, and external partners.
CDT Programme – flexible interdisciplinary training and development
Core CDT courses and mini-projects
This course introduces key skills and knowledge to incorporate machine learning approaches in biomedical informatics research. It will introduce you to the major sources of biological and biomedical data used in biomedical informatics research. You will learn how to use Python to retrieve and parse this data using reproducible research practices. Through guest lectures delivered by experts in the respective biomedical application areas you will be exposed to a varied selection of biomedical research topics and data analytics approaches representative of current challenges in the domain.
In this course you will undertake two group research projects in Artificial Intelligence for Biomedical Innovation that have been co-designed between the CDT and external partners. The projects will be supervised by a small team of internal and external experts in Machine Learning & Biomedicine. The projects will draw on the new skills and knowledge that you have acquired through other courses and will especially develop your skills and experience in working in an inter-disciplinary research group tackling a common challenge in biomedicine using a range of methodologies.
The course gives an overview of the ethical issues (e.g. bias, fairness, privacy) and brings together different case studies from various contexts. You will analyse case studies to identify and mitigate potential risks considering legal, social, ethical or professional issues.
Elective Courses
Elective course allow you to customise your formal learning with guidance from CDT academics and your supervisory team. The aim is to give you the freedom to explore new areas, fill skill gaps, and put you in the best position to undertake your research and pursue your desired future career. As our programme is integrated you have the flexibility to take elective courses at any point in years 1-3. This is very useful as new learning requirements are likely to emerge throughout the course of your studies.
3-month Research Placement (Year 1, 2 or 3)
Each CDT student will have an opportunity to undertake a research placement as part of their studies, in collaboration with one of our partners. Its aim is to broaden your exposure to performing real-world application driven research at the interface between biomedicine and computer science.
The placement will ordinarily take place away from the University with an external partner, giving you experience of research in a different environment. This placement may be with the same partner with whom you’re collaborating on your PhD project, or with someone completely different to give you experience of research in a new environment.
This project can be taken once in any of the first three years of the programme.
Extended Skills Training
In addition to specialist domain-specific courses, the CDT programme includes a wealth of wider training and development opportunities to help you gain well-rounded experience and grow into an effective independent critical thinker with valuable transferable skills.
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a framework for reflecting on, anticipating, and deliberating about the ethical, social, and legal questions that arise in the research and development of new technological tools, practices, and systems. Throughout your time in the CDT you will learn how to apply this framework to your research and ensure that it creates value for society in an ethical and responsible way.
The concept of Responsible AI is becoming increasingly important, with both academia and industry placing great value on researchers who are skilled at evaluating ethical implications and social responsibility of their work and acting accordingly.
Training in this area will be delivered flexibly through self-study, masterclasses, and peer learning, with opportunities to explore ethical implications of your research with your peers, domain experts and general public. It will include workshops and toolkits co-developed with the Alan Turing Institute (ATI) that cover the key principles of responsible research and innovation:
Over the past four years the University of Edinburgh have accelerated 280 ventures helping to raise >£150m and 150 student businesses to raise >£30M in the last year alone. They will convene a network of investors, researchers, and industry partners and provide support to ensure long-term success for our entrepreneurial activities. The Bayes Centre and Edinburgh Innovations (EI) will provide mentoring, business advice, incubation, entrepreneurial courses, acceleration, and a rich network of contacts. You will have access to EI’s exciting PhD Max programme designed to empower entrepreneurial PhD students, and the Venture Builder Incubator (VBI): a four-month digital transformation programme providing you with the skills to create and grow science-based start-ups that positively impact society. Together these will provide excellent opportunities for you to maximise the impact of your research, engage with external partners, and translate ideas into real-world usage.
The programme is co-created with our external partners to ensure that you become innovation ready graduates, that your research is driven by stakeholder needs, and to maximise its impact. To facilitate this, our dedicated Business Development Executive and Entrepreneurship Training Lead will work closely with you to support and develop your innovation and entrepreneurship goals.
You will take part in regular hackathon enterprises where you will work collaboratively on data and coding challenges. These will include competitions (e.g., DREAM Challenges and BioCreative), industrially sponsored ones (e.g., Roche Dementia Challenge), and ones proposed by academics, other students, and partners. These will strengthen the connection with your peers, enable peer-peer learning, and hone software engineering, data handling, and analysis skills.
You will have access to a variety of support, courses and retreats on different transferrable skills. These include public speaking and presentation skills, writing, science communication, time management, research integrity, project management, networking, research data management, leadership and many others. The courses are offered by the University’s Institute for Academic Development (IAD) and Digital Research Services, as well as external providers carefully selected by the CDT.
You will receive training in public communication and engagement through a range of external and internal providers. We will support you to develop podcasts, instructional videos, blogs, and use of social media to communicate your research. You will take part in outreach activities (e.g., the Edinburgh Science Festival, and Sutton Trust workshops to widen participation in higher education) as well as in local and national health innovation networks (e.g., the Scottish Health and Social Care Innovation Network, One HealthTech UK, and UoE Medical School innovation network, coordinated by the Usher Institute).
We will co-ordinate activities to create open courseware using models developed by the Turing Commons, and The Turing Way at the ATI, Edinburgh Carpentries, and the Ed-DAsH team. You will work with faculty and external partners to co-develop educational and informational open-source material to establish a bank of resources for different stakeholders to engage with biomedical AI research and its implications for society.
You will benefit from our extensive experience preparing PGR students for life after their PhDs. We will host seminars and visits by people from different career stages from public and private sector organisations, including our external partners, focusing on career journeys. These “case-studies” will give students examples of career options, and provide opportunity to discuss decisions, challenges, and opportunities with presenters.
You will also have access to the University Careers Service and advice and mentoring from academics and staff from external partners.
You will benefit from our seminar series and other talks that will be a blend of traditional academic talks, career exemplar vignettes from alumni and early career staff from academia and beyond, and skills development/awareness talks. The programme will host two distinguished lectures per year, and a mixture of other local, national, and international speakers from academia and external partners.
All students, supervisors, and CDT management group members will have the opportunity to take certified mental health first-aid training, making them well-equipped to support their peers and colleagues, as well as gain valuable skills in active listening and resilience.
