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Postgraduate Projects

Postgraduate Projects

The projects listed below are those which our academics are interested in supervising and are actively recruiting for the 2025-26 academic year. If you are interested in applying for one of these projects, please contact the lead supervisor directly to discuss this further before making your application for admission. Please note this list is of projects which do not have guaranteed funding; fully-funded projects are advertised separately on the following webpage: Research studentships at the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford.

This list is not exhaustive, so if you have another project in mind or would like to explore potential projects, please contact the academic you would like to work with well in advance of the admissions deadline stated on the course page. Information about the various areas of research covered by the department are listed on the following webpage: Research | Department of Engineering Science | University of Oxford.

Thomas Adcock

  • Physics informed machine learning for coastal flood prediction using Oxford’s RTide package
  • How useful is tidal energy? How would tidal fit into the UK electrical grid (co-supervisor Professor Thomas Morstyn)
  • Rain on waves: Simulating the damping of ocean waves by rain in CFD (co-supervisor Wouter Mostert)
  • Wave loading on wind turbines (co-supervisor Emma Edwards)
  • Rogue waves in the ocean—how big can they grow?
  • Ocean wave forecasting using machine learning

Natalia Ares

  • Machine learning for advancing quantum technologies – Quantum technologies and AI
  • Quantum devices for nanoscale thermodynamics – Quantum technologies and out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics
  • Autonomous quantum machines (co-supervisor Federico Fedele) – Quantum technologies

Amro Awad

  • Secure Chiplet-based Architectures
  • Novel Memory Bandwidth Optimizations for High-Throughput AI Accelerators
  • Secure In-Memory Computing Architectures
  • Privacy-Aware LLM Inference in the Cloud

Abhirup Banerjee

  • Multimodal Machine Learning for Low-Cost Cardiovascular Disease Diagnosis and Risk Prediction
  • Deep Generative Models for 3D/4D Cardiac Anatomy
  • Deep Learning Models for Super-Resolution and Reconstruction in X-ray Coronary Angiography

Laurence Brassart

  • Chemo-mechanical modelling of All-Solid-State-Batteries towards fatigue life predictions
  • Unveiling the role of mechanical stresses on the lifetime of biodegradable plastics
  • Rate-dependent fracture of soft materials: experiments and multiscale modelling

Daniel Bulte

  • Assessing brain blood flow in neurodegeneration: Using MRI and transcranial Doppler to assess cerebrovascular reactivity as a biomarker for neurodegeneration such as Alzheimer’s disease.
  • Smartphone-based neurovascular assessment: Developing a smartphone app using ML to combine demographic and physiological data such as pupillometry to assess neurovascular health.

Manolis Chatzis

  • System Identification and Observability Algorithms for Structural Dynamics
  • Structural Health Monitoring and Damage Detection of Infrastructure Elements with Unmeasured Excitations
  • Dynamic Response of Museum Contents and Gallery Exhibits
  • Modelling and Monitoring the Dynamics of  Offshore and Floating Wind Turbines

Justin Coon

  • Communication and Sensing in Sensor Networks with Massive Multiple Access (co-supervisor Mihai Badiu) – Information Theory, Communication Theory

Luca Di Mare

  • Oscillating aerofoil theory for bio-inspired power and propulsion (co-supervisor Amanda Smyth)

Daniel Eakins

  • Study of instability formation and energy localisation in advanced fusion targets
  • Enhancement of fatigue life through cavitation peening
  • Crystal plasticity modelling of twin formation under high strain-rate loading
  • Development of advanced models for material failure under shock loading
  • Visualisation of damage and failure mechanisms in composite materials using ultrafast X-ray imaging
  • Ultra-fast spatially resolved temperature measurements of heterogenous materials under shock loading (co-supervisor David Chapman)
  • ML-assisted signal processing for shock-compression and high-rate materials characterisation (co-supervisor David Chapman)
  • Thermo-mechanical response of aerospace alloys under non-equilibrium heating conditions (co-supervisor David Chapman)
  • Stereoscopic DIC measurements under extreme temperatures for aerospace and fusion applications (co-supervisor David Chapman)

Maurice Fallon

  • Semantic 3D Reconstruction for Robots using Language Models

Tim Hageman

  • Computational multi-physics modelling to predict environment-induced material failures
  • Computational material and fracture modelling to predict ice-sheet collapses

Joao Henriques

  • Dexterous Robot Manipulation with Rapid Motor Adaptation (co-supervisor Ioannis Havoutis)

Stephanie Hirmer

  • Global mapping of green hydrogen- Spatial analysis of green hydrogen production potential and cost assessment (co-supervisor Alycia Leonard)
  • Critical minerals in Zambia- Spatial analysis of renewable energy potential for mining and processing (co-supervisor Alycia Leonard)
  • Clean energy transition and security in Ukraine- Geospatial analysis of post-conflict energy needs, economic opportunities, and decarbonization goals (co-supervisor Alycia Leonard)
  • Measuring progress toward SDG7 in Sub-Saharan Africa- Improving electricity access definitions and measurement methods to track progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7.1.1). (co-supervisor Alycia Leonard)

Felix Hofmann

  • Rapid Measurement of Deep Earth Seismic Properties (co-supervisor Hauke Marquardt)
  • Radiation-Resistant Fusion Reactor Materials (co-supervisor Edmund Tarleton)
  • Fundamental structure and properties of lattice defects
  • Materials for hydrogen fuel systems

David Howey

  • Unsupervised data-driven fault detection in battery systems
  • Battery passports and the circular economy
  • Sodium-ion battery continuum modelling (co-supervisor Charles Monroe)

James Kwan

  • Synthesising green nitrogenous fertiliser from air and water (sonochemistry)
  • Exploring sonochemical CO2 reduction (sonochemistry)
  • Sonochemical cracking ammonia to form hydrogen (sonochemistry)
  • Selective oxidation towards high value products using sonochemistry (sonochemistry)
  • Applying acoustic holographic techniques towards optimal sonochemistry (acoustics, sonochemistry)
  • Transducer array design towards scalable sonochemical reactors (acoustics, sonochemistry)
  • Listening to bubbles and mapping them in sonochemical processes (acoustics, sonochemistry)
  • Advanced theranostic applications of sound-sensitive multi-cavity microparticles (acoustics, biomedical engineering)

Maria Lissner

  • Interface Mechanics in Heterogenous Materials: Influence of Defects, Features and Rate-Dependent Behaviour (co-supervisor Daniel Eakins)
  • Sustainable Design Strategies: Translating Heterogenous Material Characteristics to Additive Manufacturing (co-supervisor Daniel Eakins)
  • Dynamic Interlaminar Fracture Energy: Exploring Underlying Mechanisms and Data Accuracy (co-supervisor Daniel Eakins)

Kostas Margellos

  • Probabilistic safety in traffic control (Control theory; Control barrier functions; Optimization; Data-driven control; Statistical learning theory; Ground vehicle control)
  • Learning with corrupted data (Optimization; Distributional robustness; Optimal transport; Robust control and optimization; Statistical learning theory)
  • Multi-agent optimization — breaking the time-scale separation (Optimization; Distributed algorithms; Singular Perturbation; Feedback control)
  • Learning moving targets (Statistical learning theory; Data-driven optimization; Compression learning; Scenario Approach)
  • Probabilistic operating envelopes in power systems (Power systems; Data-driven control; Scenario Approach; Optimal Power Flow)

Emilio Martinez-Paneda

  • Critical experiments to unravel hydrogen-material interactions holding back hydrogen’s decarbonization potential
  • A new class of multi-physics finite element models to accelerate the energy transition: from Li-Ion batteries to hydrogen

Thomas Morstyn

  • Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Grid-Edge Power System Flexibility
  • Hybrid Quantum-Classical Computing for Power System Optimisation
  • Multi-Scale Design for Power System Flexibility Markets

Wouter Mostert

  • Modelling wave-driven pollutant transport in coastal environments
  • Deformation and impact dynamics of contaminant-laden droplets (co-supervisor Alfonso Castrejón-Pita)
  • Fast numerical models for nonlinear wave propagation
  • Physics of spume generation in ocean waves (co-supervisor Alfonso Castrejón-Pita)
  • Breaking-wave impact on structures
  • Development of turbulence under breaking ocean waves

Alison Noble

  • Federated analysis in medical imaging
  • Human-AI collaboration in healthcare imaging
  • Artificial Intelligence in medical imaging

Reece Oosterbeek

  • Fatigue and degradation in bioresorbable lattice materials
  • Mechanics and degradation of additively manufactured foams
  • Manufacturing complex components from bioresorbable composites using powder bed fusion
  • Water absorption under mechanical load in bioresorbable particulate composites
  • A 3D printed, bioresorbable osteotomy wedge

Antonis Papachristodoulou

  • Scalable optimisation-based methods for nonlinear control

Christopher Proctor

  • Smart bioelectronic devices – Biomedical engineering

Dan Rogers

  • High power density power electronics with two-phase immersion cooling (co-supervisor Kawsar Ali)
  • Cascaded resonant converter based modular multilevel converter (co-supervisor Kawsar Ali)

Barbara Rossi

  • Behaviour of stainless steel beams with sinusoidal web openings - Area: Civil and environmental engineering
  • Fatigue resistance of weathering steel details - Area: Civil and environmental engineering

Clive Siviour

  • Saving Lives Sustainably: novel polymers and structures for impact protection (co-supervisor Aaron Graham)

Harrison Steel

  • Combining synthetic biology and evolution for high-throughput engineering of Bacteria for sustainability applications.
  • Developing machine learning methods for predicting Antibiotic Resistance Evolution (AMR) with new robotic experimental platforms.

Chris Stevens

  • Meta-atom sensors for Robot Proprioception and control.
  • Meta-material object localization and characterization in one, two and three dimensions
  • Meta-Skin for Smart Robots.
  • Shape Morphing Electro-mechanical meta-structures.
  • Noisy Communicaiton channels for secure data exchange.

Philip Torr

  • Safety of Text-to-Image/Video Generation, including  Copyright, Privacy, Harmful Content Unlearning (co-supervisor Jindong Gu)
  • Alignment of Multimodal Large Langue Models: Audio, Image, Text, Video, and More Modalities (co-supervisor Jindong Gu)
  • Interpretable Decision of Autoregressive Transformers and Beyond - Building Transformer Variants or Some Model Beyond for Interpretable Prediction. (co-supervisor Jindong Gu)

Christopher Vogel

  • Regional-scale aerodynamic interactions between wind farms
  • Uncertainty quantification in wind and tidal turbine yield and loading prediction
  • Aerodynamics of multi-rotor wind turbines

Konstantina Vogiatzaki

  • Hydrogen Combustion and Plasma Ignition
  • Machine Learning Assisted Fluid Modelling (co-supervisor Steve Roberts)
  • Understanding the injection dynamics of cryogenic fuels
  • Microscale Solidification for Cryogenic Carbon Capture
  • Porous Media Modelling for Electrolysis  using Multiple Mapping Conditioning
  • Fluid Interaction with surfaces at ultra low temperatures (co-supervisor Alfonso Castrejon-Pita
  • Machine Learning Assisted Hydrogen Safety Monitoring (co-supervisor Steve Roberts)
  • Modelling Non-Spherical Droplets
  • Cryogenic Fuel Combustion: From ultra cold to ultra hot

Richard Willden

  • Experimental testing of tidal stream energy systems (co-supervisors Christopher Vogel, Federico Zilic de Arcos, Amanda Smyth)
  • Hydrodynamic performance optimisation and design of prototype multi-rotor tidal energy systems (co-supervisor Federico Zilic de Arcos)
  • Aeroelastic modelling of wind and tidal turbine blades (co-supervisor Amanda Smyth)
  • Hydrodynamic modelling and analysis of unsteady gust interaction with tidal turbines (co-supervisors Amanda Smyth, Christopher Vogel and Federico Zilic de Arcos)
  • Controlled tip vortex instability in wind turbines for improved wind farm performance (co-supervisors Amanda Smyth and Christopher Vogel)

Zhong You

  • Deployable structures and structures with multiple stability-  Area: mechanical, civil and structural engineering
  • Origami structures and their applications in robotics – Area: mechanical, civil and structural engineering
  • Implantable expandable medical devices – Area: mechanical, civil and structural and biomedical engineering
  • Energy absorption structures and materials - Area: mechanical, civil and structural and biomedical engineering

Amy Zavatsky

  • Pathology-specific foot models for clinical gait analysis (co-supervisor Julie Stebbins)
  • Using data visualisation and machine learning techniques to aid the interpretation of clinical gait analysis data (co-supervisor Min Chen)
  • The new normal: more personalised ways to assess gait deviations in children

Tingting Zhu

  • Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Treatment Regime
  • Uncertainty Models for Time-to-event Analysis
  • Digital Twin Modelling for Healthcare
  • Generative Models for Multimodal Healthcare

Noa Zilberman

  • High performance interconnect for AI systems (hardware/software co-design) (in collaboration with Nick McKeown)
  • Advanced memory architectures for AI systems (hardware focused) (co-supervisor Amro Awad)
  • High performance AI Systems (distributed systems, hardware/software co-design) (co-supervisor Amro Awad)
  • Sustainable and resilient computing / networking infrastructure (hardware or software focused)
  • In-network computing for health applications (hardware or software focused) (co-supervisor Yvonne Lu)