Studentships

The candidate will be working on an exciting project on a novel fuel concept for the future low-carbon transport in the Centre for Advanced Powertrain and Fuels at Brunel University of London. The project will investigate the fundamentals of nanobubbles in liquid fuels and their applications in combustion engines. Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations will be employed to provide insights on the microscopic behaviour of nanobubbles in liquid fuels and their subsequent impact on fuel injection and combustion process at engine relevant conditions. The successful applicant will become a member of a large research group working on the project, which includes experimental and modelling studies and will work in close collaboration with other members of the team and external research partners. The candidate will attend regular project meetings to report the research progress and is expected to contribute in preparation of journal papers and conference proceedings.  Experience in Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations will be an advantage.  You should be highly motivated, able to work independently as well as in a team, collaborate with others and have effective communication skills.  For informal queries, please contact Prof Xinyan Wang: xinyan.wang@brunel.ac.uk.

Applications are invited for one full-time PhD studentship within the Mechanical Engineering Department funded by the EPSRC doctoral training programme. The PhD studentship is for a period of 42 Months effective 1 October 2026. The successful applicant will receive an annual stipend (bursary) of £22780 plus payment of their full-time Home fees. Cardiovascular diseases remain a major global health concern, and many patients depend on multiple daily medications. However, traditional tablet manufacturing offers limited flexibility to tailor treatments or combine drugs efficiently. This PhD project aims to overcome these challenges by developing sustainable, point-of-care 3D printing of personalised cardiovascular polypills, with the goal of simplifying treatment and improving patient adherence. This project is a collaboration between Brunel University London’s Engineering Department and Kingston University’s School of Pharmacy, bringing together expertise in pharmaceutical science, digital design, and materials and manufacturing engineering. You will join a supportive, interdisciplinary research community at the forefront of healthcare innovation, sustainability, and advanced manufacturing. Using cutting-edge pharmaceutical printing technologies, you will fabricate and evaluate 3D-printed polypills designed to improve treatment adherence and therapeutic outcomes. Training opportunities within this project include advanced manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing, bioink development, dissolution testing, and advanced materials and drug-release characterisation, as well as high-impact communication skills. These experiences will prepare you for careers across academia, the pharmaceutical industry, or the healthcare sector. This interdisciplinary project is ideal for candidates from pharmacy, chemical engineering, biomedical sciences, materials science, or related disciplines, particularly those interested in personalised medicine, green pharmaceutical innovation, and advanced manufacturing. If you are passionate about driving innovation in healthcare and contributing to sustainable, patient-centred solutions, this project offers a unique opportunity to make a meaningful impact while developing cutting-edge skills at the forefront of pharmaceutical science and advanced manufacturing. Please contact Dr Bin Zhang at bin.zhang@brunel.ac.uk for an informal discussion about the studentship.

Applications are invited for one full-time EPSRC Industrial CASE (ICASE) PhD studentship for the project “Best practices for minimising dross formation during melting of scrap aluminium”. BCAST is a specialist research centre in metallurgy with a focus on processing metallic materials for lightweighting applications. The project is in collaboration with Constellium, a global leading manufacturer of high-quality, technically advanced aluminium products and systems. Successful applicants will receive an annual stipend (bursary) starting from approximately £23,000 plus payment of their full-time home tuition fees for a period of up to 48 months (4 years). In the aluminium recycling industry, dross formation represents a substantial material loss, with up to 5-10% of the charge potentially lost as dross. Dross primarily consists of aluminium oxides, impurities, and trapped metal, forming due to reactions between molten aluminium and atmospheric oxygen. Various factors contribute to excessive dross formation, including scrap condition, furnace type, melting cycle parameters, heating sources, and furnace atmosphere. Effective control of dross formation can improve metal recovery, reduce environmental impact, and lower production costs. Different scrap sources, such as end-of-life products, machining scrap, and production returns, present varying levels of contamination and oxide coatings, which can lead to inconsistencies in dross formation. By studying surface characteristics of scrap from various sources and implementing controlled preheat and environment, we can significantly reduce the oxidation of molten aluminium and minimise dross formation. This studentship outlines a comprehensive study aimed at establishing best practices to minimise dross formation during the remelting of aluminium scrap sourced from various stages of the recycling process. Emphasis will be placed on optimising preheat treatments, melting cycle parameters, and furnace atmosphere control, alongside introducing specific elements/flux that inhibit oxide growth. The project will be part of the activities of the Constellium University Technology Centre (UTC) established with BCAST. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to interact with researchers in BCAST and with Constellium’s industrial research engineers. An industrial supervisor of the project will be appointed by Constellium. This close collaboration provides a strong foundation for a future career, whether in industry or academia. Please contact Prof. Hari Babu Nadendla for an informal discussion about the project.

Food processing currently relies heavily on the combustion of natural gas to provide process and space heating. Until recently, natural gas was considered the preferred fuel for heating due its lower unit cost and greenhouse gas emissions compared to alternative fossil fuels and electricity. Emissions from the combustion of natural gas, however, are fixed, and gas, unlike electricity cannot benefit from the use of renewable energy sources and nuclear power for decarbonisation.  To meet the net zero target by 2050 it is therefore imperative that the use of natural gas is phased out in the next 10-15 years. This places significant challenges on the food manufacturing industry which include changes to processing technologies to accommodate decarbonised energy vectors, the need to make informed decisions on the adoption of new technologies, and significant capital investment.  To address this challenge, we are seeking to recruit a highly motivated and enthusiastic doctoral researcher to undertake investigations on a range of emerging electrified technologies, energy recovery technologies and alternative gas burning fuels for the decarbonisation of industrial cooking.  The project will be based within the Centre for Sustainable Energy Use in Food Chains (CSEF) which has substantial expertise and experimental facilities to support the research.  

This research proposes the development of a sustainable, integrated system for the remediation and recycling of wastewater discharged from condenser economizers. The project addresses the critical challenge of managing "acidic load" and chemical pollutants inherently present in the industrial condensate generated during heat recovery processes within industrial heat exchangers. By integrating advanced water-recycling technologies directly into the heat-waste recovery cycle, the project aims to extract acidic pollutants at the source, removing microbial pollution, transforming a hazardous byproduct into a high-quality, reusable resource with an inline process solution. This integrated solution will facilitate optimization of industrial energy consumption, and provide a scalable, future-ready methodology for closed-loop resource recovery system. The study will conduct a rigorous evaluation of long-term operational performance, providing essential insights into the chemical and microbial efficiency, economic viability, and environmental safety of the proposed system.

Applications are invited for one full-time EPSRC Industrial CASE (ICASE) PhD studentship for the project “Development of natural-ageing-resistant, heat-treatable lean aluminium alloys for automotive applications” The Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) is a specialist research centre in metallurgy with a focus on the processing of metallic materials for lightweighting applications. See www.brunel.ac.uk/bcast for more information. The project is sponsored by Constellium, a leading global manufacturer of high-quality, technically advanced aluminium products and systems. Successful applicants will receive an annual stipend (bursary) starting from approximately £23,000 plus payment of their full-time home tuition fees for a period of up to 48 months (4 years). Lean automotive aluminium with a lower concentration of alloying elements offers moderate strength and relatively high productivity compared to its highly alloyed counterparts. However, automotive aluminium alloys are susceptible to natural ageing at room temperature, resulting in the formation of clusters from a supersaturated solid solution produced after fast quenching from solution heat treatment. This leads to increased hardness, which affects both formability and the subsequent precipitation hardening process. In addition, promoting a circular economy in the aluminium industry by increasing recyclability and using more recycled aluminium is essential for saving resources, reducing waste and creating a more sustainable future. This project will focus on understanding the effects of vacancy-trapping element addition and quench rate sensitivity of lean Al-Mg-Si-based alloys with varying level of recycled content on the natural ageing response at room temperature and precipitation hardening behaviour during artificial ageing treatment, with the aim of developing lean recyclable Al-Si-Mg-based alloys that are resistant to natural ageing, tolerant of slower quenching rates, and capable of offering high productivity and moderate mechanical properties for automotive applications. The project will be part of the activities of the Constellium University Technology Centre (UTC) established with BCAST. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to interact with researchers in BCAST and with Constellium’s industrial research engineers. An industrial supervisor of the project will be appointed by Constellium. This close collaboration provides a strong foundation for a future career, whether in industry or academia. Please contact Prof. Isaac Chang at Isaac.Chang@brunel.ac.uk for an informal discussion about the project.

Constellium, a global leader in aluminium manufacturing and innovation, seeks to advance its capabilities by placing greater emphasis on thermo-mechanical process optimization and precipitate kinetics engineering. The design and optimization of aluminium alloys have traditionally relied on compositional tuning – adding or adjusting alloying. This requires tight compositional control hard to ensure, especially, with high-scrap content. This Ph.D. proposal aims to develop a comprehensive framework that integrates kinetic modelling and optimized thermal strategies to revolutionize aluminium alloy development – moving from a composition-centric approach to a thermal process-driven methodology.Objectives: Critically evaluate the limitations of conventional alloy development routes based on alloying element variation. Support and validate previous findings and experiments.§ Implement advanced kinetic models to predict Thermo-Mechanical Ageing (TMA) condition for specific desired properties of high-scrap aluminium alloys.§ Design and validate tailored thermal treatment paths (Solutionizing, quenching, ageing and interrupted ageing, etc.). Establish processing-microstructure-property relationships using experimental data and supported by modelling predictions. Develop a digital decision-support tool to guide the UTC team doing proper heat treatment schedules based on kinetics predictions and desired mechanical property targets. Expected results and impact: This Ph.D. project is expected to develop high-scrap-content alloys and enhance digital, AI-integrated recycling by optimising process windows and thermal paths instead of focusing solely on chemical composition. Once specific mechanical properties - like yield strength and elongation - are identified for an application, a digital tool, for example, will recommend the suitable high-scrap alloy, its thermo-mechanical treatments, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption. By shifting the emphasis from "chemical control" to "kinetics and thermal process control," we seek to redefine high-performance, scrap-tolerant aluminium alloy design. This will help reduce environmental impact and energy costs.

This PhD will focus on the design, development and optimisation of the upgraded CMS hardware trigger for the High-Luminosity LHC, including the operation and integration work required for the Tracker upgrade. It will emphasise implementing advanced real-time algorithms to efficiently identify top-quark signatures, ensuring robust performance in high pile-up conditions and strengthening the discovery potential for new physics.

Applications are invited for one full-time EPSRC Industrial CASE (ICASE) PhD studentship for the project “Understanding crush behaviour of recycled 6xxx Aluminium alloys subjected to different thermomechanical treatments” The Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) is a specialist research centre in metallurgy with a focus on the processing of metallic materials for lightweighting applications. See www.brunel.ac.uk/bcast for more information. The project is sponsored by Constellium, a leading global manufacturer of high-quality, technically advanced aluminium products and systems. Successful applicants will receive an annual stipend (bursary) starting from approximately £23,000 plus payment of their full-time home tuition fees for a period of up to 48 months (4 years). The net-zero and sustainability targets, as well as export cost, mean that there is an increased need to rely on a new class of alloys with higher recycle content that must be developed for both high-strength and crash-resistant alloys. Due to the differences in minor impurity additions in the recycled alloys compared with the alloys based on primary alloys, there is a need to develop new, and modify the current thermo-mechanical process used to strengthen the current generation of crush alloys. The programme will use different thermomechanical processing paths, including heat treatment and more complex paths, including deformation and ageing and other non-conventional paths to provide the best combination of crush performance and strength along with energy absorption properties from the new generation of high-recycle-content crush alloys. The main objective of the project is to understand the deformation behaviour of the high-recycle-content crush alloys and the role of tramp elements in controlling the final property profiles. The understanding developed here will provide pathways to exploit the alloy composition and thermomechanical treatments to optimise the property profiles of the next generation crush alloys and allow the full exploitation of the various tramp elements found in the recycled alloys to maximise the property profiles. The project will be part of the activities of the Constellium University Technology Centre (UTC) established with BCAST. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to interact with researchers in BCAST and with Constellium’s industrial research engineers. An industrial supervisor of the project will be appointed by Constellium. This close collaboration provides a strong foundation for a future career, whether in industry or academia. Please contact Dr Chamini Mendis at Chamini.Mendis@brunel.ac.uk for an informal discussion about the project.