Natural History Museum

We have an active student community of over 150 doctoral researchers linked with the NHM, many of whom are based at the museum. We have a Graduate Centre specifically for quiet student working and socialising, and regular socials and in-house training for PhD students. Students are also encouraged to engage with our public-facing programme, and frequently  participate in science communication activities. Our student committee organise student-led activities including our flagship annual Student Conference, which is always an excellent event with high profile speakers.  

We encourage students and supervisors to get in touch with our researchers regarding short project supervision or to develop full PhD project ideas. More information on our research can be found here Research | Natural History Museum. Please contact postgradoffice@nhm.ac.uk in the first instance.  

An overview of LIDo-relevant facilities is listed below: 

Molecular and Sequencing facilities The Natural History Museum (NHM) has a dedicated 
molecular biology laboratory facility that provides access to the latest genomics equipment and 
expertise from extraction through to sequence analysis. The facility specialises in non-standard 
protocols and sample types, working to sequence non-model organisms and challenging archival material. We have dedicated ancient DNA (aDNA) labs, and protocols developed for sequencing and analysing environmental DNA (eDNA) and for extracting genomic material from historical museum collections. We have equipment to support all stages of a molecular research project pipeline, including Thermo KingFisher APEX automated DNA purification and Tecan robots, Qubit and Agilent tapestation assays, and Illumina MiSeq sequencing facilities. Please get in touch if you are interested in pursuing a molecular biology project with us.  

Computing resources The NHM is one of six founding members of the consortium running 
the BBSRC ALERT18 UK Crop Diversity High Performance Computing facility (HPC) (https://www.cropdiversity.ac.uk/). NHM has additional HPC resources on site managed by technical administrators, core bioinformaticians and an active bioinformatics community. 

Long term storage facility NHM has a dedicated Molecular Collections Facility (MCF). The MCF is the UK’s most extensive secure, purpose-built, ultracold, biodiversity resources cryofacility. It incorporates state-of-the-art equipment to maintain tissue and DNA specimens in the biobanking formats required for and generated by today’s genetic/genomic research programmes.  

Imaging and Microscopy Resources The Imaging and Analysis Centre at the NHM is one of the best equipped laboratories in any museum in the world. We have 17 full-time members of staff supporting around 50 instruments addressing a wide variety of imaging and analytical techniques. 

The labs offer Chemical analysis, including CHNS, ICP-OES, FTIR, GC-MS and LA-ICP-MS; X-ray diffraction; Scanning electron microscopy (4 instruments); Analytical SEM and Electron microprobe analysis; 3D scanning and micro-CT scanning (3x 3D scanners, metrology microscopy and 2x micro-CT scanners) together with a comprehensive Light Microscopy Laboratory, including computer controlled transmission, and stereo microscopes, a slide scanner and a confocal microscope. 

The labs have been developed to address the needs of the NHM’s research community and to handle the types of specimens in its collections. We can therefore handle most types of research projects, are experienced with non-destructive techniques and are used to working with and training students to get the best possible results. Access to the labs is through discussion with the appropriate lab manager and we welcome interdisciplinary projects which combine different techniques or methodologies. 

AI The NHM is prioritising digitising 80 million specimens from one of the world’s most important natural history collections. Our digitisation programme is a big focus for AI research, but AI is being used by many of our researchers in different contexts, from analysing image data to taxa identification. There is plenty of scope to explore AI project ideas if you are interested in this.