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Programme

Overview

Fully funded 4-year PhD programme with bespoke training courses. The programme has been put together with industry to fill skills gaps. Training courses span the duration of the PhD, with a view to understand the product development lifecycle and develop professional and business know how.

A Multidisciplinary Programme

  • Learn from peers with a different background to you
    • Improves your communication when with people from outside of your own discipline
  • Wide programme of technical and social events
    • Benefits of a built in support network
    • Developing you into a future leader with a broad range of skills and knowledge

A picture of a Postgraduate Researcher looking at a piece of machinery, and a series of formulae.

Training Courses

You will undertake non-credit bearing training courses as a cohort in areas that span the CDT themes. The training courses are designed to develop essential skills for success, alongside courses that develop your entrepreneurial, cross disciplinary skills as well as professional and business skills.

Training courses are grouped into:

  • Cross-Disciplinary Training
  • Professional and Business Skills
  • Advanced Technical Skills

The combination of these courses will develop your understanding of all aspects of the product development lifecycle and develop you as a person in terms of your professional development.

Course 1 is cross scale challenges which includes (but not limited to) lab work and responsible research innovation training. Course 2 is essential skills for success which includes (but not limited to) research data management, ethics and Matlab. Course 3 is functionalisation and performance of products which includes (but not limited to) stabilisation and controlled release. Course 4 is bonding to bulk measures which includes (but not limited to) microscopy, spectroscopy and analytical and physical measurements. Course 5 is process modelling between scales which includes (but not limited to) linear regression, design of experiments and principal component analysis.

Projects

Whilst a traditional PhD sees postgraduates working alone on a specific single project, the CDT aims to cover areas of the product development lifecycle which need to be addressed but are too big for an individual to address in isolation.

Our CDT Director, Prof. Elaine Martin says:

‘The CDT offers a fantastic opportunity to have an impact on industry, removing wasted development time and costs.’

Research projects cover a range of structures from those where you will work solely within an academic environment through to those in partnership with industry including multinationals and SMEs (small to medium enterprises).

During the initial 3 months, you will work with academic and industry supervisors to develop a project whilst undertaking the initial training courses.

Below is a video from one of our current Cohort 3 PGR's, Kudakwashe Chingono, on his experience with the CDT and his project selection.

 

Examples of projects being worked on by our current Postgraduate Researchers are available at Student Research Profiles.