Are you holding Master’s degree and looking for PhD positions? Swansea University, Wales, United Kingdom inviting online application for funded PhD Programs / fully funded PhD positions.
Interested and eligible applicants may submit their online application for PhD programs via the University’s Online Application Portal.
1. PhD Position in Computational Engineering/ Machine Learning
Summary of PhD Program:
Computational methods for predicting complex unsteady flows are computationally demanding, while full-field experimental methods are very expensive. This project is at the forefront of the emerging field of machine learning and data-driven computational modelling. The project aims at developing unique new models to predict fluid mechanic characteristics by integrating advances in high order CFD techniques for simulations of urban flows with accuracy and robustness The aim is to build a surrogate model for wind wake prediction using high fidelity CFD data – thus taking into account the effects of the urban built environment (i.e. buildings and greenery). This development will form a fundamental building block for the hybrid platform on pollutant dispersion monitoring and response.
Last Application Date: 11 January 2023
2. PhD Position in Computer Science
Summary of PhD Program:
As discussed in The Law Commission’s report, the behaviour of autonomous vehicles (AVs) must abide by legislation and regulation such as the Highway Code. The challenges of computational law are to integrate: logical formalisations of the law, rules and actions in a programming language, and representations accessible in natural language. For example, how to manage violations of a law such as “Automobiles may not mount the pavement”? The overall aim is to build into an operating system the soft constraints of the law rather than have hard constraints or post hoc, external adjudication. In the last 3 years, there has been academic progress to integrate the law (The Law Commission’s consultation) with Artificial Intelligence (logic, normative and non-monotonic reasoning, computational linguistics, and logic programming in constraint Answer Set Programming).
Last Application Date: 4 January 2023
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3. PhD Position in Aerospace, Materials
Summary of PhD Program:
SiCf/SiC Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC) have long been considered for use in high temperature applications within the gas turbine engine. Their specific strength and ability to operate at high temperatures provides the potential to increase gas turbine engine operation temperatures which results in improved fuel efficiencies and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. A further benefit is that in comparison to the current nickel-based superalloys which are typically employed in high temperature applications within the gas turbine engine, the need for complex cooling regimes is not required. Nonetheless, for CMCs to fulfil their potential a holistic understanding is required not just of the CMC material itself but also their interactions with existing gas turbine components. This project will focus on understanding these CMC-metallic interactions and their influence on structure and mechanical integrity. Interactions are to be investigated across a range of thermal, mechanical, and chemical environments.
Last Application Date: 18 November 2022
4. PhD Position in Computer Science
Summary of PhD Program:
Model-based security testing has the potential to provide for systematic testing and evaluation of implementations. Security testing of embedded systems (as part of an increasing real-world need for IoT evaluation and certification) is increasingly being adopted in a number of sectors. In collaboration with CENSUS Labs, who are involved in real-world security testing and assurance of systems, this project would develop a formal framework for model-based testing. The model will have to represent the environment, I/O interfaces, internal implementation complexities, and also account for a threat model to represent attacker behaviour. Following from this, a test case generation algorithm would be implemented to account for systematic faults and manipulated sequences to evaluate the system. The project will implement a bespoke test bench, in close collaboration with CENSUS Labs, to automate this tool chain with the ultimate view to assurance against established standards and best practices.
Last Application Date: 18 November 2022
5. PhD Position in Manufacturing / Materials / Engineering
Summary of PhD Program:
This PhD will focus of manufacturing of electrolytes for solid state batteries within the battery storage team which is part of the SPECIFIC IKC in Swansea University. Solid state batteries have the potential to be longer lifetime, faster charging and safer than conventional liquid state batteries and this is an important area of research to support renewables to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project will include design of composite powders to create eutectic compositions enabling fusion of particles at lower temperatures than the standard methods. The successful candidate will have access to a wide range of manufacturing and characterisation equipment for a successful project. They will work alongside current PhD student who working on sintering of solid-state electrolytes through a near infra-red heating process in order to reduce sintering time; this new project has some method alignment which will support PhD training whilst being separate with regards project aims.
Last Application Date: 16 November 2022
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6. PhD Position in Civil Engineering
Summary of PhD Program:
The project aims to develop a state-of-the-art rapid holistic modelling framework for multiple hydrogeomorphic hazards triggered by extreme rainfalls in uplands. The physical mechanism operation and interaction underlying these extreme hazard processes will be investigated. Overall, this project aims to deliver a step-change in both scientific understanding of multi-hazard processes due to extreme rainfalls and operational capability for managing risk such hazards pose to life and property in a changing climate.
Last Application Date: 16 November 2022
7. PhD Position in Aerospace Engineering
Summary of PhD Program:
Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Swansea University. The successful candidate will be working on a multidisciplinary topic. Birds routinely fly in gusty conditions and close to obstacles, both of which challenge small engineered air vehicles. There is, therefore, significant potential for bio-inspiration to improve and optimise the design of urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles. Recent studies have shown how gliding birds reduce the effect of vertical gusts, but understanding how flapping fliers respond to streamwise gusts and turbulence remains an important knowledge gap with potential applications to aircraft. This ambitious interdisciplinary project will address this, using high-speed cameras, PIV, a motion-capture system and an onboard inertial measurement unit to characterise how birds respond to streamwise gusts and turbulence during flapping flight. Following this, the aim will be to investigate how bird responses to gusts and turbulence can be applied to conventional wings or rotors and to quantify the aerodynamic effects generated with these implementations.
Last Application Date: 11 November 2022
8. PhD Position in Psychology
Summary of PhD Program:
This project aims to explore whether experiencing the psychological state of ‘flow’ whilst in nature can lead to more beneficial outcomes for wellbeing and sustainability. Flow experiences are considered to have many benefits spanning across improvements in wellbeing, enhanced performance, and, potentially, stronger prosocial and pro-ecological values (Isham & Jackson, 2022). However, thus far it has not been considered whether the environment in which flow is experienced has an impact on its consequences. We could reason that experiencing flow when engaging with nature will have greater beneficial consequences than will experiencing flow in urban environments or more passive forms of nature engagement.
Last Application Date: 9 November 2022
9. PhD Position in Materials Science, Dielectrics, Semiconductors, Electronics, Optoelectronics
Summary of PhD Program:
Dielectrics are important elements of all electronic and optoelectronic components irrespective of the constituent semiconductor platform be it silicon, compound, oxide or solution processable. In this exciting project, we will investigate the use of a novel new deposition technique called Molecular Vapour Deposition (MVD) to create advanced, high performance dielectric and other functional coatings for challenging applications such as vertical transistors, wide gap electronics and large area organic and perovskite optoelectronics. MVD is capable of producing very high quality, highly conformal and dense layers with a range of dielectric constants – and crucially does so at low temperature < 200C. The project will be prosecuted as part of the Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials portfolio and benefit from the £50M facility to come on-line in mid-2022 including state-of-the-art clean room and processing tools. The project will be closely connected with industry and the successful candidate will have a fantastic opportunity to be trained in all aspects of semiconductor and dielectric device processing.
Last Application Date: 4 November 2022
10. PhD Position in Genomics/ genetics
Summary of PhD Program:
This is a collaborative PhD projects that aims to improve the welfare and delousing efficacy of cleaner fish used in salmon farming. We aim to assess the behavioural and physical/genomic changes occurring in the brain of cleaner fish, to establish physiological and stress-related consequences of cohabitation under poly-culture and use the finding to improve fish welfare and inform the artificial selection of better, more efficient elite lines of cleanear fish. We will use a combination of behavioural assays, genomics and epigenomics and combine these with expertise on in machine vision and deep-learning algorithms and optimise tools to assess and improve the welfare of cleanerfish in an industrial environment (SSC).
Last Application Date: 4 November 2022
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11. PhD Position in Engineering, Physics, Materials, Nanotechnology
Summary of PhD Program:
Brain-inspired neuromorphic computing could overcome the inherent limitations of conventional silicon technology, offering a new generation of faster low-power computing, direct hardware image recognition, and high sensitivity sensors. Typical approaches to physical neuromorphic devices focus on highly-organized architectures of artificial neurons, which fail to replicate the requisite complex synaptic interconnectivity. Nanostructured networks of metal nanoparticles instead offer comparatively inexpensive self-organising networks that inherently display brain-like dynamics in both the neurons and the synapses that link them together. This project will use a multi tip scanning probe microscope to directly manipulate and measure these networks over the length scale of single artificial neurons. Under applied bias, dynamic electrical pathways continually form and break, displaying emergent collective neuromorphic behaviour.
Last Application Date: 2 November 2022
12. PhD Position in Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, Electronic Engineering
Summary of PhD Program:
We are seeking one PhD candidate to support the project. The ideal candidate will be able to work in a cross-disciplinary environment, drawing on the expertise of researchers, and developing their own expertise in the manufacture and characterisation of energy-harvesting solar cells and modules that have been designed specifically for low-light energy harvesting. The candidate will investigate the low-light performance and operating physics of the photovoltaics cells and provide photovoltaic modules to our team of electronic engineers who will integrate them into real-World IoT devices.
Last Application Date: 2 November 2022
13. PhD Position in Ecology
Summary of PhD Program:
Unravelling how species interactions influence ecosystem services remains a major research challenge with implications for sustainable management. In hard-bottomed intertidal habitats, molluscan grazers, such as limpets and topshells, strongly regulate ecosystem state by determining shifts between seaweed and exposed rock. Yet, it remains unclear how grazer foraging behaviour and resulting interactions: i) are altered by environmental context (e.g., sediment load, substrate complexity); and ii) play-out on increasingly widespread coastal infrastructure, such as seawalls and slipways. This project aims to elucidate how key environmental factors control grazer foraging behaviour and grazer-seaweed interactions on coastal infrastructure. A key outcome will be establishing how management interventions can facilitate grazers to shift slipways from hazardous opportunistic seaweed states to safer bare-rock states, providing a nature-based solution to seaweed control that currently requires regular, active physical and/or chemical removal.
Last Application Date: 31 October 2022
14. PhD Position in Mathematics
Summary of PhD Program:
The project is suitable to a student who has a solid foundation in probability theory, functional analysis and/or numerical analysis, with a moderate knowledge of partial differential equations. The student working on this project would first be trained in techniques spanning a diverse range of disciplines: stochastic processes and random fields, stochastic calculus, computational and statistical methods with simulations, and selected topics on partial differential equations. They would then develop the well posedness of the concerned stochastic equations and corresponding numerical schemes (if interested). They would also try to develop new equations, linking to advanced modelling in applied subject areas or industrial mathematics.
Last Application Date: 28 October 2022
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15. PhD Position in Computer Science
Summary of PhD Program:
Comparing the expressiveness of different computation models and formalisms is an important theme in many fields of theoretical computer science including complexity theory, descriptive complexity and automata theory. The main aims of this project would be to carry out such comparisons across classes of functions naturally defined by automata, λ-calculi and logical interpretations, using 0 (probably) techniques coming from automata theory and the semantics of linear logic. In 1996, a striking connection between λ-calculus and automata was uncovered: the simply-typed functions from strings to Booleans using Church encodings recognize exactly the class of regular languages. This sort of connection was then refined and further exploited by specialists of linear logic and automata to tackle problems related to higher-order model checking and automata running over infinite data.
Last Application Date: 28 October 2022
16. PhD Position in Computer Science
Summary of PhD Program:
This project will combine wafer production and metrology processes for next generation semiconductor materials and devices – mapping out the materials defects and process-induced defects for Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride devices and wafers. Devices process optimisation and state-of-the-art defect prediction, targeting material and process-induced defects, mapped using KLA tools, will be used to develop models using data-driven sequence-based deep learning with human-in-the-loop Reinforcement learning. This sequence-based architecture will allow early identification of wafer and device defects – reducing process costs and improving power devices yields in automotive applications.
Last Application Date: 26 October 2022
