Imperial will host three of the new centres, which offer engineering and scientific training to postgraduates.

The centres will join the list of 72 that were announced by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in November last year as part of a ?350 million programme.

The EPSRC said that it has been able to fund the additional centres after renegotiating contracts with universities that had previously been allocated centres, and gaining additional funding from industry and academia.

Mr Willetts, the universities and science minister, said: ¡°The government will be investing in a further 900 students through an additional 19 Centres for Doctoral Training, bringing our total investment in CDTs to ?390 million.¡±

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He added: ¡°In addition, universities, industry and other charitable partners will be adding a further ?124 million to support the training of tomorrow¡¯s scientists and engineers. The combined public and private investment amounts to ?764 million.¡±

When the initial list of centres was announced last year, the EPSRC noted that many high quality bids remained unfunded. News surfaced in December that the research council was in talks with successful bidders to negotiate funding cuts of up to 15 per cent in order to fund extra centres.

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Professor David Delpy, chief executive of the EPSRC, said: ¡°The support of the academic and industrial communities has been tremendous and we would not have been able to fund these new centres without their cooperation.¡±

holly.else@tsleducation.com