The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is set to spend £250 million (US$370 million) on creating 44 centres to train 2,000 PhD students over the next five years. Expanding a small pilot scheme, the interdisciplinary centres for doctoral training will accept their first batch of students next October. Spread across 22 UK universities, they will focus on areas including climate change, sustainable energy, health-care technologies and nanotechnology. Seventeen of them will have strong ties to business: students will spend up to 75% of their time training with industrial partners.