PhD Studentships in the School of Physics & Astronomy 2025 - 2026

For 2025/26 admissions the Astronomy deadline is 6th January, 2025 and for Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics and Condensed Matter applications the deadline is 17th January, 2025.

The School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh is pleased to offer PhD studentships in the subject areas of:

• Astrophysics, including cosmology, galaxy formation and evolution, nearby galaxies and the Milky Way, stellar astronomy, exoplanets, star and planet formation, the solar system, astrobiology, astronomical instrumentation, computational astrophysics, and data science in astronomy.
• Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, including experimental, computational and theoretical research in soft matter, statistical and biological physics, astrobiology, quantum ordering, and physics at extremes of pressure and temperature.
• Nuclear Physics, including nuclear astrophysics and nuclear structure research, studies of nuclear reactions important for stars, the early universe and nucleosynthesis, properties of exotic nuclei.
• Particle Physics Experimental, including research based on the two CERN experiments of ATLAS and LHCb, neutrino physics with DUNE, SBND, and SuperNEMO experiments, and direct dark matter searches with the LZ and DarkSide experiments.
• Particle Physics Theory, including perturbative and non-perturbative field theory for LHC predictions, lattice field theory, the structure of gauge theory, scattering amplitudes, gravitational waves, flavour physics, physics beyond the standard model, cosmology, turbulence and data science.

As a successful applicant you will have a good Honours degree (2.1 or above, or its international equivalent) in a relevant science discipline. You will join our community of 200+ PhD students, 234 postdoctoral researchers and 102 academic staff members to undertake exciting and vibrant research; working with world-leading researchers in a multi-national, multi-cultural, environment. In addition, we are part of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) offering access to a wider graduate school and research community across Scotland.

The School of Physics & Astronomy offers several competitive PhD studentships including studentships funded by UKRI (this year 30% of UKRI studentships can potentially be allocated to international students).

Details of all available studentships can be found at the following link:

www.ph.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate-research/funding-studentships

For further information on our research activities and available projects go to:

www.ph.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate-research/research-opportunities

To apply for a PhD please go to the following link and make your application:

www.ph.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate-research/how-apply

For Astronomy applications please go to:

https://ifa.roe.ac.uk/phds-jobs-fellowships/phd-studentships

For general enquiries please email:

Gradschool.Physics@ed.ac.uk

Bell-Burnell Graduate Scholarship Fund

We are able to support two student applications to the IoP Bell-Burnell Graduate Fund where we have had significant success in previous rounds:

https://www.iop.org/about/support-grants/bell-burnell-fund

Candidates interested in being considered for those positions should contact the programme director (m.williams@ed.ac.uk) as soon as possible (and certainly before 10 Dec 2024) to ensure they are matched to a suitable supervisor, and receive appropriate support through the internal selection process.