Royal Society PhD Studentship: Reconfigurable Memristor Circuits for Biosignal processing - Ref: 1001818FP

Applications are invited for a prestigious Royal Society PhD Studentship to be filled as soon as possible. This scholarship will fund students for their tuition fees, a bursary to cover living expenses (£14,777 per year) and a Research Training Support Grant for research consumables and conference attendance. This role will be based at the Electronic Materials and Devices Research Group within the Zepler Institute and will use state-of-the-art facilities at the Southampton Nanofabrication Centre.

The outline of the project is presented below
Recent advancements in nanotechnologies and smart materials have prompted the creation of a new class of devices, known as memristors, that compared to conventional CMOS transistors, are capable of achieving ‘more’ functionalities (e.g. multi-bit operation) for ‘less’ energy/space. These devices’ attributes are now pursued by world-leading industry like Intel (3D-Xpoint), Samsung and IBM for memory applications, while our group at Southampton has pioneered several exploitations in neuromorphic (Nat Comms 7, 12611, 2016) and biosignal processing (Nat Comms 7, 12805, 2016) applications. Our group has interest in employing this technology to enable bioelectronic medicines in synergy with Galvani Bioelectronics/GSK through a Royal Society Industry Fellowship programme. With this Royal Society PhD Studentship, we aim expanding the domain of applicability of memristive devices, beyond performing signal processing directly on such devices, and instead employ their recongifuration capability for optimizing performance of existing circuit architectures. This will be performed with a focus of eliminating the power/area costly pre-amplification stages, bringing new prospects to bioelectronics medicines and other emerging embedded hardware applications (e.g. IoT, Artificial Intelligence, etc). The PhD student will have the opportunity to spend a minimum of 6 months in the industry partner organisation, Galvani Bioelectronics, over the duration of the award.

The ideal candidate should have an MEng/MSc (or equivalent, or near completion) with first class honours or distinction in Electronics, Materials Science, Physics, or a closely related subject with experience in mixed-signal integrated circuits design and an interest in neuro-electronics/prosthetics. The studentship is available to UK/EU applicants for a period of 4 years. The Electronic Materials and Devices Research Group will provide research experience in one of its programs, training, laboratory facilities and access to its seminar and lectures. Students would also be encouraged to attend major conferences during their period of study and would have access to all university facilities for wider study, including the libraries, and recreation.

Prospective candidates are encouraged to contact Prof Themis Prodromakis ([Email Address Removed]) directly for further details.

To apply please send a CV, relevant publications, the names of two referees and a covering letter explaining your current interests and relevant background. Please note that the successful candidate will be asked to submit a PhD research application to Registry to ensure they have met all necessary admissions criteria. Information on how to apply can be found here:

www.southampton.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgstudy/howdoiapplypg.html