Location:
Department of Engineering, Streatham Campus, Devon, University of Exeter
The University of Exeter’s College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences is inviting applications for a fully-funded PhD studentship to commence in January 2022 or as soon as possible thereafter. The studentship will cover Home tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £15,609 for 3.5 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study.
This College studentship is open to UK and Irish nationals, who if successful in their application will receive a full studentship including payment of university tuition fees at the home fees rate.
Project Description:
Conventional digital electronic computers face mounting speed and energy consumption challenges for AI type computing applications. In this PhD we will develop novel approaches to overcome such challenges. We will do this by computing in the photonic domain, where we can exploit the huge bandwidth, parallelism and speed inherent to photonics. More specifically we will develop novel active phase-change photonic metasurfaces to implement fast, energy-efficient, deep neural networks (DNNs). The work will involve both the design and simulation of such computing metasurfaces, and their experimental fabrication, characterisation and optimisation. The project will be carried out as part of an EPSRC-funded international collaboration between Exeter’s Centre for Metamaterial Research and Innovation (http://emps.exeter.ac.uk/metamaterial-cmri/) and the NSF-funded Center for Metamaterials in the USA (https://iucrc.nsf.gov/centers/center-for-metamaterials/).
Entry Requirements
This studentship is open to UK and Irish nationals, who if successful in their application will receive a full studentship including payment of university tuition fees at the home fees rate.
Applicants for this studentship must have obtained, or be about to obtain, a First or Upper Second Class UK Honours degree, or the equivalent qualifications gained outside the UK, in an appropriate area of science or technology.
Suitable degree areas include physics, engineering, computer science, computer engineering, materials science, natural sciences and other related subjects.
If English is not your first language you will need to have achieved at least 6.0 in IELTS and no less than 6.0 in any section by the start of the project.
Alternative tests may be acceptable (see http://www.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply/english/).