PhD, postdoctoral and student routes into the Maciocia Lab
We get a steady stream of enquiries about joining the lab, so this page sets out the routes in and, just as importantly, the ones that do not exist. Please read the section relevant to you before emailing - it will save you a wait for an answer we can already give you here.
Paul supervises PhD students through central schemes that run their own calls and recruit centrally - principally the Cancer Research UK City of London Centre PhD programme and the UCL/Birkbeck MRC Doctoral Training Partnership. Applications go through those schemes, on their own timelines, and not by direct email to the lab.
If you are interested in a project with us, the best approach is to apply to one of these schemes when their call opens and name a potential supervisor or area of interest where the application allows it.
UCL charges the overseas fee rate for international PhD students, and the lab cannot cover this from its own funds. Before Paul can take on an international PhD applicant, you need a scholarship that covers full overseas fees plus stipend for the whole PhD. We say this plainly and early because it is the single most common reason an enquiry cannot go further - please check your funding covers this before getting in touch.
One additional route worth knowing about: UCL runs a joint PhD programme with Université Paris-Saclay, where students split their doctoral research across both institutions, and this can open up funding that is not otherwise available.
Coming shortly: we are about to advertise for a research technician. The post will appear on the UCL jobs site and we will link it from our news page as soon as it is live.
Postdoc and research assistant positions are advertised on the UCL jobs site when they open. We are not able to consider informal applications outside an open advert, so please check there rather than emailing to ask whether a position exists.
We are a small group without rolling positions, so speculative applications cannot usually be accommodated. If you are looking to bring your own funding, see hosted fellowships below.
We are open to hosting fellows who bring their own funding. If you are a postdoctoral scientist or a clinician scientist planning a fellowship application and you would like to hold it here, get in touch early with an outline of what you want to do. We are glad to develop a proposal with you, to co-apply for external funding where that fits, and to support applications for personal fellowships such as Marie Skłodowska-Curie, EMBO or HFSP.
One practical point to know at the outset: a hosted fellowship also needs formal support from the UCL Cancer Institute as the host department, not just from the lab. We would put that in place once there is a proposal worth backing, so it is worth approaching us well before a deadline rather than close to one.
For clinicians training in the UK, the usual route is an MRC clinical research training fellowship, which runs in rounds through the year. Clinicians coming from outside the UK generally arrive on a scholarship from their home country or an equivalent international fellowship scheme, and the same points about funding and departmental support apply.
We do not take unpaid interns, summer placements or work shadowing, and everyone working in the lab must be enrolled on a formal degree programme.
We do take a small number of undergraduate and Master’s project students each year, where the project is an assessed part of your degree. UCL students, for example from the Cancer MSc, are welcome and pay no bench fees. Students from other institutions are welcome too, but UCL charges bench fees (currently £300 per month) which you or your institution must cover, and numbers are very limited. International project students also need to cover their own living costs.
If your question genuinely is not answered above, email p.maciocia@ucl.ac.uk. Please do check the routes above first, particularly if you are asking about a PhD or postdoc position, as we are not able to reply individually to enquiries already covered on this page.