Led by Professor John Underhill, Professor of Exploration Geoscience at Heriot-Watt, the CDT’s combined research and bespoke training model is a natural evolution from the success of the NERC CDT in Oil & Gas and its 125 PhD students whose expertise and research are being applied across the environmental and subsurface sciences.

The £2.5 million award is a massive endorsement of our original CDT model and underlines its success, value and relevance to the geoscience community, academia, industry and government as it seeks to tackle the energy challenge facing the planet.

– Professor John Underhill, CDT Academic Director, Shell Professor of Exploration Geoscience, Heriot-Watt University

Courses are led by staff from the academic and industry partners but the ethos of the training is that students and course leaders interact as peers.

The training curriculum covers a broad spectrum of geoscience and its applications e.g. Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics, LiDAR, geo-informatics, reservoir management, but also subjects of more general application such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Communicating Science and Career Development.  The training programme is funded via annual subscriptions from industry.

The training is an excellent opportunity for students to interact with one another and representatives from other academic, industry and regulatory organisations, thus creating a wider PhD peer support group and generating a network of connections across the sector that leads to future employment options and collaborative ventures.