Biology

Candidates must usually achieve a minimum upper-second class (2:1) UK honours degree (or overseas equivalent) in a relevant subject.

If English is not your first language or you have not previously studied in English, our usual requirement is the equivalent of an International English Language Testing System (IELTS Academic Test) score of 6.5, with not less than 6.0 in each of the sub-tests.

If you don't meet the minimum IELTS requirement, we offer pre-sessional English courses, foundation programmes and language support services to help you improve your English language skills and get your place at Birkbeck.

Visit the International section of our website to find out more about our English language entry requirements and relevant requirements by country.

If you are not from the UK and you do not already have residency here, you may need to apply for a visa.

The visa you apply for varies according to the length of your course:

• Courses of more than six months' duration: Student visa
• Courses of less than six months' duration: Standard Visitor visa

International students who require a Student visa should apply for our full-time courses as these qualify for Student visa sponsorship. If you are living in the UK on a Student visa, you will not be eligible to enrol as a student on Birkbeck's part-time courses (with the exception of some modules).

For full information, read our visa information for international students page.

Please also visit the international section of our website to find out more about relevant visa and funding requirements by country.

Please note students receiving US Federal Aid are only able to apply for in-person, on-campus programmes which will have no elements of online study.

Students are charged a tuition fee in each year of their course. Tuition fees for students continuing on their course in following years may be subject to annual inflationary increases. For more information, please see the College Fees Policy.

If you’ve studied at Birkbeck before and successfully completed an award with us, take advantage of our Lifelong Learning Guarantee to gain a discount on the tuition fee of this course.

PhD students resident in England can apply for government loans of over £26,000 to cover the cost of tuition fees, maintenance and other study-related costs.

Flexible finance: pay your fees in monthly instalments at no extra cost. Enrol early to spread your costs and reduce your monthly payments.

We offer a range of studentships and funding options to support your research.

We provide a range of scholarships for eligible international students, including our Global Future Scholarship. Discover if you are eligible for a scholarship.

We have excellent computing facilities and infrastructure, including large clusters supported by three full-time computer management staff. Through the ISMB staff, students are able to access a still wider range of equipment on the UCL campus, including protein nanoelectrospray, mass spectrometry and protein NMR.

Training and methodology

Studying for a PhD will provide you with opportunities to make your own research discoveries within the research-intensive environment of the ISMB. You will receive guidance from your project supervisor, from the PhD Graduate Committee, and from other members of the academic staff as you carry out your research and your progress is assessed.

PhD students are assessed throughout their studies and are required to meet specific assessment milestones, which include written reports, oral and poster presentations, essays and vivas. The assessment process ensures that you will have the opportunity to develop your eventual thesis, and that guidance and improvement can be provided to you throughout your studies. Once submitted, assessment of the thesis includes an oral viva.

Please note that laboratory-based research usually requires a full-time commitment. Part-time research is not feasible for many laboratory-based projects. Where appropriate, part-time students may carry out some of their research at their place of work.

We provide a wide range of courses catering specifically for the training needs of research students. This training includes a formal programme of lectures on graduate studies (Science in the Real World), transferable skills and modern techniques.

We run lecture courses which are especially relevant to PhD students in particular research areas (including a series on the Principles and Practice of Structural Biology and an advanced lecture series). You are also encouraged to attend any appropriate lectures from our MSc programmes and distance learning courses, subject to approval by your supervisor. Depending on your chosen supervisor and research project you may have the opportunity to attend and contribute to research laboratory group meetings, or to attend external conferences.

PhD student experience

Activities that will further enhance your scientific experience include: a biennial retreat; a biennial symposium; an annual graduate symposium; weekly 'Friday Wrap' meetings where postdocs and senior PhD students present their latest work; and a series of joint ISMB seminars that take place throughout term-time. There are other seminar opportunities in the numerous surrounding research institutes, and skills training opportunities including careers days.

Read more about our vibrant research culture.

ISMB joint PhD programmes

Students on the ISMB joint PhD programmes attend courses during their first year, which provide the opportunity for them to broaden theoretical and practical knowledge in structural, computational and chemical biology. They also carry out interdisciplinary laboratory rotations in structural, computational and chemical biology, and gain research expertise in participating departments outside Birkbeck.

Find out more about our learning resources and resources at the ISMB.

Follow these steps to apply to an MPhil/PhD research degree at Birkbeck:

1. Check that you meet the entry requirements, including English language requirements, as described on this page. 

2. Find a potential supervisor for your MPhil/PhD research. You can look at the Find a Supervisor area on this page for an overview, or search our Experts’ Database or browse our staff pages for more in-depth information. 

3. Contact the academic member of staff - or the department they teach in - for an informal discussion about your research interests and to establish if they are willing and able to supervise your research. (Please note: finding a potential supervisor does not guarantee admission to the research degree, as this decision is made using your whole application.) Find out more about the supervisory relationship and how your supervisor will support your research.

4. Draft a research proposal. This needs to demonstrate your knowledge of the field, the specific research questions you wish to pursue, and how your ideas will lead to the creation of new knowledge and understanding. Find out more about writing a research proposal.

5. Apply directly to Birkbeck, using the online application link on this page. All research students are initially registered on an MPhil and then upgrade to a PhD after making sufficient progress.

Find out more about the application process, writing a research proposal and the timeframe. 

Application deadlines and interviews

Apply for your course using the apply now button in the key information section.

A critical factor when applying for postgraduate study in biological sciences is the correlation between the applicant’s intellectual and research interests and those of one or more potential supervisors.

Find out more about the research interests of our academic staff:

Biology (Organismal)

• Dr Richard C. Rayne, BSc, PhD: physiology of insects: neurobiology (peptidergic signalling) and immunology (cell-mediated defences).

Biophysics

• Dr Tracey Barrett, BSc, DPhil: protein crystallography; eukaryotic and bacterial DNA repair mechanisms; eukaryotic homologous recombination targets; NK-kB signalling.
• Dr Amandine Marechal, MSc, PhD: reaction mechanism of enzyme catalysis with emphasis on mitochondrial electron transfer chains and protonmotive cytochrome c oxidase; FTIR spectroscopy.
• Professor Carolyn A. Moores, BA, PhD: structure and function of the cytoskeleton; electron microscopy.
• Dr Marianne Odlyha, BA, BSc, MSc, PhD: environmental research for assessment of indoor conditions surrounding cultural materials and damage assessment of (macro to nanoscale) biomaterials.
• Professor Konstantinos Thalassinos, BSc, MRes, PhD: biological mass spectrometry; ion mobility mass spectrometry; protein dynamics; mass spectrometry software development.
• Professor Bonnie A. Wallace, BS, MPhil, PhD, DSc: membrane proteins; intrinsically disordered proteins, ion channels, circular dichroism spectroscopy and bioinformatics.
• Dr Giulia Zanetti, PhD: structural biology of membrane trafficking and coat protein complexes; cryo-EM and cryo-tomography.

Cell biology

• Dr Brian Ho, PhD: molecular mechanisms and genetics of bacteria secretion systems and horizontal gene transfer; impact of microbial community structure on intercellular communication and competition.
• Dr Andrew Osborne, BSc, PhD: the molecular mechanism of protein export by the malaria parasite.
• Dr Richard C. Rayne, BSc, PhD: physiology of insects: neurobiology (peptidergic signalling) and immunology (cell-mediated defences).
• Professor Helen R. Saibil, BSc, PhD, FMedSci, FRS: molecular chaperones, protein folding, misfolding and disaggregation of aggregates; membrane pore-forming proteins; 3-dimensional electron microscopy of molecular and cellular structures.

Chemical biology

• Professor Sanjib Bhakta, BSc, MSc, PhD, DPhil: structure, function, inhibition and regulation of key enzymes in different metabolic pathways to validate novel therapeutic targets in mycobacteria; understanding molecular mechanisms of persistence and drug resistance in M. tuberculosiamas; developing high throughput methods and models for evaluating antimycobacterials and repurposing drugs for new anti-TB treatment.
• Dr Paul M. King, BA, DPhil: computer simulation; computer-aided drug design.
• Dr Philip Lowden, BA, PhD: chemistry, genetics and enzymology of natural product biosynthesis in bacteria and fungi; medicinal chemistry of Huntington's Disease; chemical studies of post-translational protein modifications.
• Dr Amandine Marechal, MSc, PhD: reaction mechanism of enzyme catalysis with emphasis on mitochondrial electron transfer chains and protonmotive cytochrome c oxidase; FTIR spectroscopy.
• Professor Neil Q. McDonald, BSc, PhD: molecular mechanisms controlling growth factor-mediated signalling pathways.
• Dr Marianne Odlyha, BA, BSc, MSc, PhD: environmental research for assessment of indoor conditions surrounding cultural materials and damage assessment of (macro to nanoscale) biomaterials.
• Dr Katherine C. Thompson, MA, DPhil: soft matter, neutron and X-ray reflection, spectroscopy, kinetics and computational biological chemistry.

Computational biology

• Dr Paul M. King, BA, DPhil: computer simulation; computer-aided drug design.
• Dr Irilenia Nobeli, BSc, MSc, PhD: analysis of human and bacterial transcriptomes using next-generation sequencing data; computational studies of regulatory RNAs; bioinformatics, chemoinformatics and molecular simulations applied to molecular recognition and drug design.
• Dr Katherine C. Thompson, MA, DPhil: soft matter; neutron and X-ray reflection; spectroscopy; kinetics and computational biological chemistry.

Microbiology

• Professor Sanjib Bhakta, BSc, MSc, PhD, DPhil: structure, function, inhibition and regulation of key enzymes in different metabolic pathways to validate novel therapeutic targets in mycobacteria; understanding molecular mechanisms of persistence and drug resistance in M. tuberculosis; developing high throughput methods and models for evaluating antimycobacterials and repurposing drugs for new anti-TB treatment.
• Dr Brian Ho, PhD: molecular mechanisms and genetics of bacteria secretion systems and horizontal gene transfer; impact of microbial community structure on intercellular communication and competition.
• Dr Philip Lowden, BA, PhD: chemistry, genetics and enzymology of natural product biosynthesis in bacteria and fungi; medicinal chemistry of Huntington's Disease; chemical studies of post-translational protein modifications.
• Dr Andrew Osborne, BSc, PhD: the molecular mechanism of protein export by the malaria parasite.
• Professor Gabriel Waksman, PhD, FMedSci, FRS: structural and functional biology of bacterial secretion systems.

Structural biology

• Dr Tracey Barrett, BSc, DPhil: protein crystallography; eukaryotic and bacterial DNA repair mechanisms; eukaryotic homologous recombination targets; NK-kB signalling.
• Professor John Christodoulou, BSc, PhD: structural biology of protein folding and misfolding on the ribosome; NMR spectroscopy.
• Professor Neil Q. McDonald, BSc, PhD: molecular mechanisms controlling growth factor-mediated signalling pathways.
• Professor Carolyn A. Moores, BA, PhD: structure and function of the cytoskeleton; electron microscopy.
• Professor Helen R. Saibil, BSc, PhD, FMedSci, FRS: molecular chaperones, protein folding, misfolding and disaggregation of aggregates; membrane pore-forming proteins; three-dimensional electron microscopy of molecular and cellular structures.
• Professor Konstantinos Thalassinos, BSc, MRes, PhD: biological mass spectrometry; ion mobility mass spectrometry; protein dynamics; mass spectrometry software development.
• Professor Gabriel Waksman, PhD, FMedSci, FRS: structural and functional biology of bacterial secretion systems.
• Professor Bonnie A. Wallace, BS, MPhil, PhD, DSc: membrane proteins; intrinsically disordered proteins, ion channels, circular dichroism spectroscopy and bioinformatics.
• Dr Giulia Zanetti, PhD: structural biology of membrane trafficking and coat protein complexes; cryo-EM and cryo-tomography.