Venture Science Doctorate

Summary

Join the Venture Science Doctorate (VSD) program, a 3-year PhD program focused on creating ventures to solve global challenges in health, climate, agriculture, and computation. The program, run by Deep Science Venture College, is supported by a philanthropic consortium and embedded in a global R&D coalition. Years 1 and 2 focus on scoping and invention, respectively, while year 3 centers on venture creation. Upon graduation, intellectual property is transferred to the new venture, which the candidate leads. The program is full-time and primarily remote, with in-person lab work. Tuition, expenses, a monthly stipend, and health insurance are covered.

Requirements

• Be impact-driven and have demonstrated interest in investigating or solving large-scale societal problems
• Want to build a company and lead a team that will make a huge positive impact using advanced research and technology
• Have a sense of urgency and have considered multiple ways to generate positive human and/or planetary outcomes in the next 1-5 years
• Be naturally curious and be able to share examples of past experience learning how things work
• Be 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
• Have an undergraduate degree related to science, innovation or design-thinking, or professional research experience

Responsibilities

• Familiarise yourself with a given industry, mapping the landscape to identify areas of opportunity for high-impact venture creation
• Identify the optimal solution to a given problem
• Perform lab work to develop hypotheses
• Contact partner research groups for further experimentation
• Further develop initial hypotheses, working within leading research groups to prove the technology against the original hypothesis and validate it through technoeconomic analysis
• Develop a scalable technology capable of product market fit
• Join multiple different research groups if necessary
• Work with experienced venture partners to build a complementary team and a rock-solid investment case
• Engage with investors
• Lead the new venture as a co-founder upon graduation

Benefits

• Tuition and all other expenses related to programme curriculum and research activities covered
• Monthly stipend of £2,500
• Annual contribution for health insurance
• Access to a global community of >200 science entrepreneurs
• Opportunity to work with entrepreneurial professors, research labs, and government agencies
• Access to top-tier investors/funders
• Mentorship and guidance through weekly deep-dive work sessions
• Access to opportunity insights and knowledge base
• Access to a global network of experts
• Access to a community of other science founders
• Access to a curated collection of resources and proprietary tools
• Co-Founder(s) sourcing and assessment via 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
• Customer development support