Venture Science Doctorate: venture-creation PhD program; funded scholarship

The Venture Science Doctorate (VSD) program, 3rd cohort, starting September 2025.

Join the world’s first 3-year venture creation focused PhD program run by Deep Science Venture College at Woolf University: a globally recognised, decentralised institution widening access to higher education. Our focus is exclusively on solving global challenges in health, climate, agriculture and computation through science as the basis for designing research projects from first-principles, and creating new companies founded by candidates based on this research.

The VSD is backed by a philanthropic consortium of mission aligned Partners, including Schmidt Futures, Innovate UK, SPRIND and Anglo American, and embedded in a global R&D coalition of universities and national labs, including National Physical Laboratory, the James Hutton Institute, Imperial College, Max Planck, the University of Edinburgh, University College London, Goldsmiths, University of London, Cornell University, the Mayo Clinic, and many others.

Program outline:

Upon graduating, all the intellectual property is transferred into the new venture, which the candidate continues to lead as a co-founder, with continuous support from DSV.

Full details of the program, including FAQs and Prospectus Download available on the dedicated VSD site here.

The program is full-time and primarily remote (from anywhere) with in-person study conducted in research laboratories. Applicants for VSD should be impact-driven, want to launch a science company using advanced research, and be determined to do this in just a few years.

You should apply if:

• You're impact-driven and have demonstrated interest in investigating or solving large-scale societal problems, incl., but not limited to industrial research, hackathons or other problem-based competitions;
• You want to build a company and lead a team that will make a huge positive impact using advanced research and technology;
• Your sense of urgency means you've considered multiple ways to generate positive human and/or planetary outcomes in the next 1-5 years;
• You're naturally curious and can share examples of past experience learning how things work;
• You're determined enough to spend 1 week, during the application process, finding an optimal approach to a societal problem in your own time, using Deep Science Ventures' scoping ideation methodology;
• You have an undergraduate degree related to science, innovation or design-thinking, or professional research experience.

We actively welcome candidates from any part of the world and any walks of life to apply - our primary focus is on mission alignment and the desire to create impact through science.

Deep Science Ventures College will cover the tuition and all other expenses related to programme curriculum and research activities. Additionally, each student will receive a monthly stipend of £2,500 and an annual contribution for health insurance to subsidise living costs, so that socioeconomic status is not a barrier to building high-impact science companies.

You'll join a global community of >200 science entrepreneurs across our portfolio and programs, work with some of the world's most entrepreneurial…