PhD Research Opportunities in Photonic Metamaterials

Available for Oct. 2013 start

The University of Southampton is home to the world-leading Centre for Photonic Metamaterials, which was established in 2010 with a £6-million Programme Grant from The UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Metamaterials are manmade media with all sorts of unusual and useful functionalities achieved by artificial structuring at length scales smaller than that of light. The Centre for Photonic Metamaterials (www.metamaterials.org.uk) pursues an innovative, interdisciplinary research agenda in one of the most rapidly developing fields in all of science, aiming to develop a new generation of active photonic media to provide ground-breaking solutions in fields from telecoms and imaging to energy/light generation, data storage, and defence.

A variety of projects is available, targeting major scientific and technological impact in areas such as nonlinear metamaterials, super-resolution imaging, all-optical data processing and nanoscale light sources. All will include aspects of cutting-edge nanofabrication, optical characterization and spectroscopy, and computational modelling.

We are seeking several bright and highly motivated postgraduate research students of outstanding calibre. As the projects will cross normal boundaries between several science and engineering disciplines, we will consider students with backgrounds in Physics, Materials Science and related subjects. Applicants must have a first or upper second class degree (or equivalent) from a recognized university, and a solid grounding in Optics/Electromagnetism. The studentships are fully funded for 3.5 years, including tuition fees and a tax-free bursary.

For informal enquiries please write to the Programme Director Prof. N. I. Zheludev, (niz@orc.soton.ac.uk) or Dr. Eric Plum (erp@orc.soton.ac.uk). Apply online at www.soton.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgstudy/howdoiapplypg.html selecting “MPhil/PhD ORC” as degree and “metamaterials” as field of study.