Cambridge BHF 4-year PhD in Experimental Cardiovascular Research

Introduction

This four-year multidisciplinary PhD is designed to train the next generation of cardiovascular researchers to work in a cross-disciplinary environment that will equip students with the technical skills and conceptual knowledge to tackle complex cardiovascular challenges.

The course will host students from the new British Heart Foundation (BHF) 4-year multidisciplinary PhD programme. The programme draws on a shared pool of internationally recognised supervisors and aligned infrastructures between Cambridge and its partner institution Oxford, who led the bid. This will offer students genuine cross-disciplinary training.

Organisation and Research Area

The overarching aim of this programme is to reduce the burden of vascular disease by training a new generation of interdisciplinary cardiovascular scientists to investigate, prevent, and reverse the progression of vascular dysfunction.

Despite decades of research, conditions such as angina, myocardial infarction, stroke, and aneurysms remain prevalent and poorly treated. This programme will address the urgent need for new therapeutic approaches for secondary prevention interventions that halt, or regress established disease in high-risk individuals. This directly aligns with the BHF’s 2030 strategy to “support innovative approaches aimed at the prevention of heart and circulatory diseases”.

Our objective is to provide a rigorous, cross-disciplinary training environment that equips students with the technical skills and conceptual knowledge to tackle complex cardiovascular challenges.

Students will work on projects spanning four interconnected research themes:

Defining Disease using clinical imaging and deep phenotyping of healthy and diseased human material.

Elaborating Disease Mechanisms and Biomarkers through multi-omic and population-level genetic studies.

Modulating Cell Death and Inflammation using systems immunology and computational models.

Maintaining Vascular Stability by targeting smooth muscle and biomechanical pathways.

The programme draws on a shared pool of internationally recognised supervisors and aligned infrastructures. All students will benefit from joint supervision across institutions. This ensures intellectual diversity and access to the complementary expertise and facilities of both partners.