Venture Science Doctorate: a 3-year, fully-funded, venture-first PhD program

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:

The aim of year 1 is for candidates to familiarise themselves with a given industry, mapping the landscape, to identify areas of opportunity for high-impact venture creation. In a process we call Scoping, candidates will identify the optimal solution to a given problem and, alongside accredited courses such as experimental design, perform lab work to develop their hypotheses and contact partner research groups for further experimentation.

Year 2 is focused on invention, and further developing the initial hypotheses, working within leading research groups to prove the technology against the original hypothesis and validate it through technoeconomic analysis.

The goal for year 3 is venture creation, building further on the research from the previous two years, to develop a scalable technology, capable of  product market fit. If necessary, candidates may join multiple different research groups to do this. Having validated the technology, candidates will work with experienced venture partners to build a complementary team and a rock-solid investment case, before engaging with some of the 400+ investors that DSV co-invests alongside. 

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.

Requirements

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 e.g. industrial research, hackathons or other problem-based competitions etc.;
• 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.

Benefits

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 professors, research labs and government agencies supporting the VSD, and access top-tier investors/funders backing deeptech ventures.

____

About DSV

Deep Science Ventures is creating a future in which both humans and the planet can thrive.

We use our unique venture creation process to create, invest in, and spin-out science companies. We empower entrepreneurial scientists to combine scientific expertise and models for business to synthesise high-impact ventures de novo.

We are a team of operators who have founded companies and led the translation of science at some of the most respected universities, charities, funds, and government agencies. 2/3 of the team have founded or led a company at C-suite, and 65% have a Ph.D. We are deeply involved in each venture.

You will access our industry network and receive advice on follow-on fundraising strategy, including introductions to seed investors and potential customers from our global network. Furthermore, you will receive support with term sheet negotiation, grant applications to leverage further non-dilutive funding and value uplift, and access to a community of seasoned science founders in our portfolio.

We offer mentorship and guidance through weekly deep-dive work sessions, access to our opportunity insights and knowledge base, a global network of experts, a community of other science founders working on launching their own companies, and a curated collection of resources and proprietary tools.

We offer Co-Founder(s) sourcing and assessment via our proprietary tools, advisory board sourcing, advice on technical and commercial investment milestones, co-development of technical roadmap and go-to-market strategy, investment readiness pre-launch with further focus on technical and commercial proof, and customer development support.

To learn more about why we launched the VSD program, visit our article on Why we need to reinvent the PhD.

____

Applications are open until February 14th, 2025.