Are you holding Master’s degree and looking for fully funded PhD positions? University of Edinburgh, Scotland invites online application for multiple funded PhD Programs / fully funded PhD positions in various research areas.
Candidates interested in fully funded PhD positions can check the details and may apply as soon as possible. Interested and eligible applicants may submit their online application for PhD programs via the University’s Online Application Portal.
1. Fully Funded PhD Position in Engineering Education
Summary of PhD Program:
Remote laboratories allow students to do practical work with real equipment, in real-time, from anywhere by connecting to the equipment through a web-browser. At the University of Edinburgh we are leading the creation of an open-source digital infrastructure for remote laboratories (https://practable.io) and coupling physical and software developments with educational research so as to translate leading education theory into practice. This addresses the requirement for institutions to deliver more experiential learning, to more students, over a wider geographic area, together with developing much-needed alternative approaches for feedback and authentic assessment in the higher education sector.
Application Deadline: April 12, 2024
2. Fully Funded PhD Position in Elucidating molecular transport mechanisms through atomistic simulations
Summary of PhD Program:
Water scarcity is one of the grand challenges of our time. With less than 1% of the available water supply in the form of drinking water, new materials and technologies are needed to tap unconventional water sources (e.g., brackish and seawater, and wastewater). To this end, membrane processes such as reverse osmosis (RO) offer high removal of suspended solids, organic carbon, and inorganic ions compared to conventional treatment methods based on flocculation, sedimentation, and granular media filtration. In particular, RO holds promise in augmenting the water supply through membrane-based desalination and advanced wastewater treatment.
Application Deadline: June 12, 2024
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3. Fully Funded PhD Position in Development of Next Generation Megawatt Scale Wind Energy Power Converters
Summary of PhD Program:
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, together with the University of Edinburgh, are looking for enthusiastic, self-motivating applicants for an exciting PhD research position that will help define the next generation of wind energy power electronic conversion systems. This work will provide the opportunity to both contribute to leading edge research and develop industry relevant skills in renewable energy, electronic design, electrical power systems and power semiconductor applications.
Application Deadline: September 18, 2024
4. Fully Funded PhD Position in Determining the water retention behaviour of unsaturated hydrophobic granular soils
Summary of PhD Program:
Hydrophobic granular soils are under investigation for constructing roads on frost-susceptible soils in China and the US, in preference to cementitious stabilisation. Hydrophobic granular soils have also been proposed for replacing other geotechnical engineering elements requiring low permeability or resistance to root growth or cracking. In the UK, road building remains a key component of reducing the climate impact of transport whilst maintaining supply chains. Simultaneously, hydraulic risks to infrastructure brought about by climate change are increasing in severity; as of 2016, a 1% chance exists every year that monthly winter rainfall in the UK will be 20% to 30% higher than previously recorded.
Application Deadline: December 1, 2024
5. Fully Funded PhD Position in Design of protection systems through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Summary of PhD Program:
The main aims of the project are to: investigate the use of Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) models to predict the ballistic response of multi-layered armour systems, comprising a diverse range of materials, to a range of ballistic impacts; and to understand the use of Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) to supplement sparse ballistic datasets and attempt to reverse this method to predict key design parameters for armour systems. An assessment of whether a set of conditional GAN can be used to condition the current network on additional auxiliary information or design requirements that refer to a specific property relevant to the ballistic data will also be conducted.
Application Deadline: January 31, 2024
6. Fully Funded PhD Position in Decarbonising concrete construction through innovations in waste material recycling and CO2 sequestration
Summary of PhD Program:
Concrete is the most widely used man-made material in existence. Its production mostly relies on the heavy exploitation of natural resources including limestone, granite and water. The production of its key ingredient – cement – is energy-intensive, which accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions, besides being identified as the root of various other social and environmental problems. This project will explore effective ways of utilising low-carbon alternatives as binders for concrete to help alleviate cement production and its usage, contributing to the achievement of a net-zero built environment. Key highlights include the synthesis of cementitious binder that capitalises on suitable proportioning of recyclable waste materials to meet the required engineering requirements, whilst enabling significant reduction of carbon footprint by avoiding the use of virgin materials.
Application Deadline: January 4, 2024
7. Fully Funded PhD Position in Co-Design of Smart and Data-Driven Health Monitoring Furniture for Care Applications
Summary of PhD Program:
This project sits within the ACRC Academy , a dedicated Centre for Doctoral Training, co-located with the ACRC, whose students will deliver key aspects of the ACRC research agenda through a doctoral-level research and training programme that will also equip them for careers across a wide range of pioneering and influential leadership roles in the public, private and third sectors.
Application Deadline: January 30, 2024
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8. Fully Funded PhD Position in Biopolymers for packaging and membrane applications
Summary of PhD Program:
Membrane-based separation of gaseous mixtures is recognised as a low-energy and low-carbon alternative to traditional separation techniques. Knowledge of transport behaviour of different gases and liquids in new materials is of great importance for membrane separation processes, including the packaging industry. As end-of-life becomes of great importance in membrane separation field, the possibility to replace synthetic polymers with bio-based and biodegradable materials becomes the necessity.
Application Deadline: January 27, 2024
9. Fully Funded PhD Position in Artificial intelligence techniques to speed up the realistic simulation and full waveform inversion of ground penetrating radar data
Summary of PhD Program:
Ground penetrating radars (GPR) are used in a many diverse applications. These range from near-surface geophysics investigations, concrete inspection, utility network detections, landmine detection and even planetary exploration using rovers on the Moon and Mars that utilise GPR technology. All these applications rely upon the same physical principles that govern the complex interplay of ultrawideband electromagnetic energy with diverse media.
Application Deadline: January 31, 2024
10. Fully Funded PhD Position in America’s Cup yacht hydrofoils
Summary of PhD Program:
The project aims at developing an in-depth understanding of the unsteady hydrodynamics of America’s Cup hydrofoils. The project will be performed with the partnership of world-leading yacht designers and professional sailors, and will be potentially affiliated with an America Cup team.
Application Deadline: December 31, 2025
11. Fully Funded PhD Position in Aerodynamics of the gliding seeds of the Javan cucumber vine
Summary of PhD Program:
The Javan cucumber (Alsomitra macrocarpa) is a vine that climbs the trees of tropical forests toward the canopy and sunlight. At great heights, it grows pods that contain hundreds of winged seeds. As the wind blows against the opening of the pods, the samaras are peeled away and released. Unlike many gliding seeds that use auto-rotation, the seed of the Javan cucumber vine exhibits a stable gliding flight with its paper-thin wings. The seed’s design is efficient enough to achieve a slower rate of descent compared to that of rotating winged seeds.
Application Deadline: December 31, 2025
12. Fully Funded PhD Position in Aerodynamics of high-performance yacht sails
Summary of PhD Program:
The proposed project aims to investigate the fluid dynamics of yacht sails. Sails have unique flow features, which allows the generation of very high lift and high lift/drag ratio compared to wings and blades commonly used in other fields such as aeronautics and turbo machinery. The project aims to understand the underlying mechanisms of these flow features in order to allow the performance of sails to be further enhanced and, importantly, to allow the cross fertilisation of ideas in research fields where there is a need for fluid dynamic efficiency.
Application Deadline: December 31, 2025
13. Fully Funded PhD Position in Advanced Marine Renewable Energy Harvesting via Added-mass-variation Control
Summary of PhD Program:
The study of cephalopods (octopuses and squids) has demonstrated that bodies which undergo shape variations while traveling across a dense medium can exploit added-mass-variation in order to enhance thrust. This very same principle can be applied to a submerged mass-spring-damper system, showing that an actively controlled shape-variation routine can drive the oscillator in resonance by using the added-mass-variation force to balance viscous drag.
Application Deadline: December 31, 2023
14. Fully Funded PhD Position in Adaptive sensor fusion for optimised 3D sensing
Summary of PhD Program:
This project will investigate a multi-sensor approach to 3D imaging, using a SPAD ToF in combination with other types of sensors, with the aim of substantially reducing power consumption. The sensor fusion and modulation of the ToF laser source will be adapted according to the sensed environmental conditions to ensure robust, power-efficient sensing. As part of the sensor fusion, lightweight neural network models will be developed for 3D reconstruction and object detection. The project will use existing sensors (SPAD, RGB, EVS, IMU) as a starting point, and develop a system around them, with closed-loop control and data fusion being implemented on a single-board computer.
Application Deadline: June 30, 2024
15. Fully Funded PhD Position in Adaptive and smart materials for operational variability and life extension
Summary of PhD Program:
The idea of implementing a flexible structural design capable of adapting to varying environmental conditions and loading parameters represents a revolutionary solution for optimising functionality and extending the useful life of such structures [3, 4]. The core objective of this project is to engineer a self-adapting structure that seamlessly adjusts to the prescribed loading conditions. This adaptation is achieved by integrating principles of physics and data-driven measurements to facilitate real-time feedback mechanisms. Consequently, this dynamic response leads to continuous shape and geometry modifications within the structure, ultimately enhancing its capacity to accommodate the specified loading requirements more effectively.
Application Deadline: January 4, 2024
16. Fully Funded PhD Position in A multi-spectral single photon sensor for enhanced 3D vision
Summary of PhD Program:
This project aims to develop a single-photon LIDAR system that operates at multiple wavelengths, as opposed to conventional single-wavelength systems, and as such provides enhanced perception and ambient light suppression. To this end, system-level integration will be undertaken of existing SPAD arrays with suitable optics and customised laser sources. A microcontroller or FPGA will be used to interface to a computer for real-time acquisition. There will also be a focus on developing neural network models for enhanced object detection, tailored to the multispectral single-photon data. In addition to LIDAR, there will be opportunities to explore life sciences applications of the resulting imaging system.
Application Deadline: June 30, 2024
17. Fully Funded PhD Position in A deep dive into the understanding of the water adsorption hysteresis phenomena in porous materials
Summary of PhD Program:
Water is an essential molecule for life. It is omnipresent on Earth and in various forms. This provides the opportunity to harvest water even if it is not present as a liquid, for example, in arid regions. On the other hand, the presence of water, even at very low concentrations, poses serious challenges when a product needs to be dry, for example, to avoid condensation and formation of acidic components during pipeline transportation of CO2. Adsorption on porous materials provides effective solutions for those challenges. Porous materials can concentrate water in their pores very efficiently, which holds great potential for water harvesting.
Application Deadline: January 31, 2024
18. Fully Funded PhD Position in A cross-disciplinary soft systems engineering approach to improving the quality of care of an ageing population
Summary of PhD Program:
The Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC) is an interdisciplinary, £20M research centre at the University of Edinburgh. The ACRC will lead society’s response to the grand challenge of an ageing population that is growing in size, longevity and needs through the pursuit of research intended to deliver “high‐quality data‐driven, personalised and affordable care to support the independence, dignity and quality‐of‐life of people living in their own homes and in supported care environments”.
Application Deadline: January 30, 2024
19. Fully Funded PhD Position in 4D printed composite morphing structures
Summary of PhD Program:
This project aims to develop a fully instrumented 4D printed multifunctional composite actuator with improved loading capacity able to tailor its deformation autonomously. The actuator will be part of a close-loop control framework including: (i) a 3D printed embedded sensors, (ii) an electro-thermal 3D printed multifunctional composite actuator, and (iii) an integrated controller. We hypothesise that a novel hybrid actuator based on polymer/ unidirectional fibre composites layers will have superior load-carrying capacity at room temperature, while providing the necessary compliance when increasing the temperature during actuation.
Application Deadline: September 14, 2024
20. Fully Funded PhD Position in Water Repellency, Adhesion and Friction
Summary of PhD Program:
We expect that you will have a good degree in Engineering or Physics and a desire to perform practical experiment-based research. If successful, you will become a member of the Wetting, Interfacial Sciences and Engineering Group within the Institute for Multiscale Thermofluids at the School of Engineering. You will join a vibrant community of PhD students, postdoctoral research associates and academics working in various aspects of surfaces and wetting, and will develop as a scientist benefiting from our track record, which includes publications in top journals, international collaborations and contributions to key international conferences.
Application Deadline: November 27, 2024
21. Fully Funded PhD Position in Towards a world atlas of weather events to stress-test buildings
Summary of PhD Program:
A decarbonised built environment is key to climate change mitigation and adaptation, yet buildings still consume 29% of the global primary energy, mainly due to space conditioning demand [1]. This is particularly worrying given the imminent expansion of the building stock associated with population growth to 9.7 billion by 2050, the service life of buildings and their costly retrofit [2]. As the climate changes, there is a need to map closely and rigorously the boundary conditions of buildings through the so-called weather files, to facilitate learning from regular and atypical weather events and promoting robust planning.
Application Deadline: January 4, 2024
22. Fully Funded PhD Position in The physics and engineering of flowing suspensions
Summary of PhD Program:
Suspensions of particles in liquid are found throughout nature and industry, for instance slurries, chocolate, toothpaste, and ceramics. Understanding their flow properties is crucial to characterising engineering processes and describing the natural world. We are just beginning to unravel the dramatic influence that stress-controlled particle-particle interactions have on the flow behaviour when the liquid is Newtonian and the particles are hard, spherical and roughly monosized [1]. In reality these conditions are rarely met: particles are usually irregular, being elongated and having a broad size distribution, while suspending liquids are often ‘viscoelastic’.
Application Deadline: January 1, 2024
23. Fully Funded PhD Position in Structural Health Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance for Ensuring Long-Term Structural Health
Summary of PhD Program:
This research proposal addresses the challenges posed by infrastructure in the UK’s construction industry, focusing on sustainability and safety. Infrastructure, including bridges and rail structures, often experiences shorter service lives than predicted, leading to increased risks and costs. To mitigate these issues, this study aims to develop machine learning models that combines data from similar infrastructure and integrates information from previous inspections to predict potential problems. The solutions will also account for the impact of changing climate conditions on these structures. In this respect, Large Language Models (LLMs) will be considered as a key approach in addressing the challenges.
Application Deadline: October 10, 2024
24. Fully Funded PhD Position in Spontaneous and forced Capillary flows on liquid surfaces
Summary of PhD Program:
Capillary imbibition is a phenomenon in which a liquid spontaneously fills a porous solid due to the to surface tension (think water invading a sponge). Capillary imbibition occurs in many natural and technological processes, including plant water uptake, microfluidics, and printing. Crucially, thus far we understand how a liquid invades a solid medium, but what happens if the solid is replaced by a liquid? This is a fundamental question in fluid mechanics which has substantial potential to unlock solutions in engineering, ranging from reducing friction to enabling the manipulation of droplets in micromechanical devices.
Application Deadline: June 27, 2024
25. Fully Funded PhD Position in Smart Surfaces for Anti-Scaling
Summary of PhD Program:
Scaling and mineral deposits that occur due to dissolved materials in water is a problem in many industrial applications. How to remove this scaling without the use of harsh chemicals or methods to prevent it is crucial importance to both the environment and the economy. Studying scaling and its mitigation with new smart substrates gives us scientific insight that allows many technological advances.
Application Deadline: June 27, 2024
26. Fully Funded PhD Position in Saline droplet evaporation for engineering applications
Summary of PhD Program:
Evaporating arrays of droplets have attracted a lot of attention for their potential applications in areas such as microfluidics and surface patterning. When many droplets evaporate near each other, in an array, their individual local environments begin to interact and change the evaporation rates of their neighboring droplets. This means that as the droplet arrays evaporate it is possible to create specific evaporation patterns. These patterns can be harnessed for the fabrication of smart coatings, can be used to print electronic devices, or used in micro/nanostructured materials.
Application Deadline: July 5, 2024
27. Fully Funded PhD Position in Resource-efficient technologies to remove emerging contaminants from water and wastewater
Summary of PhD Program:
The water sector is the 5th largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the UK. To achieve Net Zero and mitigate climate change, water companies must reduce energy consumption by 2030 and decrease embedded GHG emissions of the treatment processes by 20501. To meet this target, novel environmentally friendly and effective approaches to water treatment technologies should be explored. Emerging pollutants, such as microplastics and pharmaceuticals, are found in water at concentrations sufficient to cause adverse effects on ecosystems, microorganisms and organisms including humans2-4.
Application Deadline: January 10, 2024
28. Fully Funded PhD Position in Recovery of Reactive Nitrogen Molecules Using Adsorption Processes
Summary of PhD Program:
One of the major challenges that the Hub intends to tackle is reducing emissions and closing the loop in the manufacture of fertilizers. The current approach when treating emissions is to reduce reactive nitrogen molecules to molecular N2. This is then reactivated to ammonia and then urea as part of the production of fertilizers or oxidized in the production of nitric acid.
Application Deadline: January 31, 2024
29. Fully Funded PhD Position in RF Electronics and Radar Antenna Systems for Automotive Radar and other Related Scenarios
Summary of PhD Program:
At the beginning of 2021, autonomous vehicle markets have been globally expanding, with novel technology ready solutions being investigated in order to make autonomous driving safer and more reliable. Extensive efforts have been made by government and industry, and it is estimated that between 2014 to 2018, £120 million has been invested in the United Kingdom for research into connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) applications. It is also estimated that the total global CAV sector will be worth £906 billion by 2035.
Application Deadline: December 14, 2023
30. Fully Funded PhD Position in Quantifying the influence of vegetation structure on wildfire behaviour in changing environments
Summary of PhD Program:
The first part of this project will involve laboratory-scale experiments to investigate the fine-scale effects of vegetation structure at the sub-fuel bed level (e.g. properties of individual pine needles in a litter layer). This will build upon recent work, conducted as part of an MEng project, which observed a possible influence of particle structure on the combustion of small-scale natural fuel beds, in a short series of preliminary experiments. This provides additional motivation for this PhD project which will consider a more detailed, systematic study and will particularly investigate the influence of sub-fuel bed structure on the burning rate of wildland fuels including investigation of the underlying physical phenomena (e.g. fluid flow, heat transfer).
Application Deadline: August 31, 2024
31. Fully Funded PhD Position in Physics-based mathematical modelling of water electrolyzer for hydrogen production
Summary of PhD Program:
In this project, you will be developing a detailed physics-based mathematical model of a water electrolyser for hydrogen production that operates on the dynamic electric supply simulating renewable electricity generation (such as offshore wind). The model will be an electrochemical model of an electrolysis cell to simulate the performance of coupled thermofluid interactions, two-phase transport, and electrochemical processes within a representative single-cell geometry by leveraging the powerful meshing generation and commercial CFD solver (such as COMSOL Multiphysics).
Application Deadline: April 30, 2024
32. Fully Funded PhD Position in Novel preforms for Automated Fibre Placement
Summary of PhD Program:
Previous investigations by our research group have proved AP-PLY laminates retain the excellent undamaged in-plane tensile stiffness of conventional angle-ply laminates while limiting crack propagation, resulting in superior structural integrity after the optimisation of the internal architecture. Compressive response of AP-Ply laminates is a current open research question. Compressive response of aerospace structures is critical since their brittle response may result in internal delamination and failure due to buckling of thinner sublaminates. In AP-Ply laminates, tows present through-thickness undulations that introduce a three-dimensional reinforcement.
Application Deadline: September 14, 2024
33. Fully Funded PhD Position in Music Listening and Transitions
Summary of PhD Program:
This project sits within the ACRC Academy , a dedicated Centre for Doctoral Training, co-located with the ACRC, whose students will deliver key aspects of the ACRC research agenda through a doctoral-level research and training programme that will also equip them for careers across a wide range of pioneering and influential leadership roles in the public, private and third sectors.
Application Deadline: January 30, 2024
34. Fully Funded PhD Position in Microplastics in wastewater treatment systems
Summary of PhD Program:
Pollution of water resources by microplastics (MP) is a global environmental problem that can cause toxic and adverse effects on human health and the environment. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) could be potentially one of the major sources of MPs release to the environment. For example, microfibres from clothing washing are transported in the raw effluent to WWTP where, because of their small size, they may bypass the treatment process. Furthermore, conventional biological processes cannot effectively destroy persistent and toxic organic compounds, such as MPs. Interactions of chemical and biological pollutants with MPs, which will enable the quantification of impacts and eco-toxicity of MPs, are not well understood yet.
Application Deadline: January 4, 2024
35. Fully Funded PhD Position in Joint Sensing and Communications for Efficient Optical Wireless Networking
Summary of PhD Program:
It is envisaged that integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) will be a key 6G technology to optimise the utilisation of resources such as spectrum, energy, and hardware. In the context of radio wireless networks, several important works have been conducted to explore the fundamental trade-offs and waveform design for ISAC systems. However, the literature is scarce in the design of ISAC systems for optical wireless communication (OWC) networks, even though they can offer much higher sensing resolution. In addition, important 6G applications with high-quality sensing requirements such as autonomous vehicles and extended reality (XR) typically use optical sensing components.
Application Deadline: January 15, 2024
36. Fully Funded PhD Position in Exploring how hydrophobic soil layers govern debris flow formation after wildfires
Summary of PhD Program:
In this project, we will examine experimentally the combined mechanisms of the formation of the hydrophobic soil layer and the triggering of slope instability and debris flows, building upon our world-leading understanding of hydrophobic soil mechanics, wildfire behaviour, and debris flow phenomena. The results from the project will assist land management agencies, for example the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, to plan for, mitigate, and evacuate people from the paths of debris flows.
