About VSD
The Venture Science Doctorate (VSD) program, 4th cohort, starting April 2027 (full-time and primarily remote). Applications are open until 31 July 2026 (end of day, BST) and are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage early submission.
The world's first 3‑year venture creation focused PhD program run by Deep Science Venture College at Woolf University. 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 and SPRIN‑D, and embedded in a integral R&D; coalition of universities and national labs, including National Physical Laboratory, James Hutton Institute, Imperial College, Max Planck, University of Edinburgh, UCL, Goldsmiths, Cornell, Mayo Clinic and many others.
Program Outline




The aim of year 1 is for candidates to familiarise themselves with a given industry and map the landscape to identify areas of opportunity for high‑impact venture creation. In a process called 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 techno‑economic analysis.
The goal for year 3 is 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 partner

📌 Venture Science Doctorate: venture-creation PhD program (España)
🏢 Deep Science Ventures
📍 España