Dr J T Cabral
Applications accepted all year round
Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
This project will explore the effect of interplay between surface patterning and biofilm prevention and growth. Employing soft matter approaches of lithography, surface instabilities, and microfluidics, we seek to understand the underlying physical chemistry and biology that governs the entrainment, profileration and removal of bio/polymeric films on surfaces. The research hypothesis is based on experimental evidence of a coupling between topography and biofilm formation. Using microfluidics, the effect of complex flows (extensional, rotational, shear) of tuneable magnitudes will be investigated. The project is of a fundamental nature and is expected to result in high impact publications, but has also significant practical ramifications (e.g. hygiene, food, personal care, cleaning, built environment), with likelihood of generating a number of important patents.
The successful candidate will join an exciting team of 15 other students, in addition to approximately 20 academics and industrialists from leading European universities and companies across the UK, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Germany.
Funding Notes
Fully funded PhD studentship for EU nationals (although not UK) for an EU-funded Marie Curie Training Network starting no later than March 2017
References
Cabral and co-workers, "Frontal vitrification of PDMS using air plasma and consequences for surface wrinkling", Soft Matter 11, 3067-3075 (2015); "A unified approach for patterning via frontal photopolymerization" Adv. Mater. 27, 6118–6124 (2015); "Microfluidic-SANS: flow processing of complex fluids" Sci. Rep. 5, 7727 (2015); Wavefront kinetics of plasma oxidation of polydimethyl siloxane: limits for sub-micron wrinkling" Soft Matter 10, 1155-1166 (2014); "Performance Enhancement of fullerene-based solar cells by light processing" Nat. Comms. 4, 2227 (2013); "Patterning polymer-fullerene nanocomposite thin films with light" Adv. Mater. 25, 985-991 (2013)
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