Institute of Process Research and Development – (Ph.D.)

iPRD offers a four year integrated MSc and PhD degree programme in Chemical Process Research and Development, which spans the chemistry-chemical engineering interface.

The aim of this program is to train chemists and engineers for a career in chemical process research and development, who will be uniquely qualified, having academic and practical experience in both engineering and chemistry. Graduates will have exceptional rounding, satisfying employers’ stated needs of trained, multi-disciplinary experts in chemical process research and development, who will be highly-sought after for jobs in process R&D, manufacturing or related areas, as well as in academia and can expect to be future leaders within the domain area. Major employers such as AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer are amongst more than 50 companies who have recently supported process R&D research at Leeds.

The pharmaceutical, agrochemical and fine chemical industries are one of the UK’s remaining manufacturing success stories and are vital to UK plc (e.g. the pharmaceutical industry contributes about £5 Billion/annum to the UK’s GDP). These industries are under substantial pressure to innovate, with drivers including the need to reduce environmental footprint, costs and speed of delivery of compounds, as well as imperatives imposed by regulatory bodies e.g. the FDA/EMEA are now actively promoting enhanced manufacturing innovation with the aim to drive up product quality, and the industry is now promoting and accepting change in return for a move to highly efficient processes making consistently low variability (sigma-6 standard) drugs. The drive to innovate comes, however, at a time when their internal research resources are becoming increasingly focused on ‘critical path activities’ that directly deliver products, reducing capabilities to perform highly innovative in-house research.