The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the UK funding body for science and engineering, has announced a £250m initiative to address the shortage of Science and engineering PhD students.

The funds will be used to create 44 Doctoral training Centres within Universities. The new centres will each take in around 10 students per year for five years starting in 2009. Students in these centres will receive a formal programme of taught coursework to develop and enhance their technical interdisciplinary knowledge, and broaden their set of skills. Alongside this they will undertake a challenging and original research project at PhD level.

Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, said: "Britain faces many challenges in the 21st Century and needs scientists and engineers with the right skills to find answers to these challenges, build a strong economy and keep us globally competitive. EPSRC's doctoral training centres will provide a new wave of engineers and scientists to do the job."

This approach to training has been extensively piloted by EPSRC through a small number of thriving Doctoral Training Centres. This new investment builds on the success of these.

Among the new EPSRC centres that may feed students into the UK pharma sector are:

• The Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (University of Bath)
• Centre for Chemical Synthesis (University of Bristol)
• Centre for Biopharmaceutical Process Development (University of Newcastle)
• Biomedical Engineering at the Translational Interface of Next Generation Healthcare (University of Oxford)
• Systems Biology Doctoral Training Centre (University of Oxford)
• Systems Approaches to Biomedical Science (University of Oxford)