PhD Studentship: The Podium Institute Studentship 2026

3.5-year D.Phil. studentship
Start date: October 2026

Application deadline:

• Tuesday 2 December 2025 (latest deadline for most Oxford scholarships)
• Tuesday 3 March 2026 (applications may remain open if places are available)
  Quote reference: 26ENGBI_CC in all correspondence and applications.

About the Podium Institute

Launched in 2021 and based at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering (Department of Engineering Science), the Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology focuses on injury prevention in youth, community, and female athletes. Unlike traditional adult-centric, treatment-based sports injury research, Podium prioritizes safety and prevention. The Institute develops and validates technologies to monitor and analyse individual risk factors for sports injuries, offering practical solutions for safer participation. Projects may be supervised or co-supervised by experts from Engineering Science and the Medical Sciences Division.

Potential Supervisors:

Prof. Thomas Okell, Prof. Johannes Weickenmeier, Prof. Constantin Coussios, Prof. Liang He, Prof. Mauricio Villarroel, Prof. Amy Zavatsky, Prof. Robin Cleveland, Prof. Tim Denison, Prof. Antoine Jerusalem, Prof. João Henriques, Dr. Christian Rupprecht, Prof. Holly Bridge, Dr. Robert Hepach.

Eligibility & Award Value

Open to UK and Overseas students.

• Fees covered: UK (£10,470) and Overseas (£34,700) rates for 2026–27.
• Stipend: Approx. £22,780 (2024–25 rate) for the first year and at least this amount for the remaining years.

Candidate Requirements

Applicants should demonstrate:

• A first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours in an engineering, physical sciences or medical sciences discipline relevant to the proposed area of research
• Excellent English communication skills.
• Strong interest in sports medicine and technology.

Desirable (not essential):

• Research experience in sports medicine and technology (e.g. publication or final year project).
• Programming skills in MATLAB or Python.

Application Procedure

Informal enquiries: Elizabeth Hempstead (podiuminstitute@admin.ox.ac.uk).

Formal applications must meet graduate admissions criteria (details are available on the course page of the University website) and include a research proposal aligned with one or more of the following priority areas:

Research Themes

• Multiphysics and data-driven constitutive modelling of traumatic brain injury and its long-term impact on health
• Physics-informed image registration approaches to infer injury mechanisms from longitudinal image data.
• Experimental characterization of the mechanical properties and damage behaviour in soft biological materials.
• The development of novel computer-vision-based techniques for contactless detection, quantification, and prevention of sport injury.
• The development of robotic humanoid simulator and benchmarking methods for testing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in sports.
• The design and development of functional materials, novel structures, and data-driven optimisation methods for impact absorption.
• The development of soft robotic and wearable assistive robotic technologies for health monitoring, injury prevention and rehabilitation.
• The development of haptic interface in Virtual Reality and “AI coach” for assisted skill learning.
• New wearable or implantable technology to prevent exercise-induced cardiac adaptations that result in cardiac arrest
• Development of new biochemical and physical markers to prevent overuse injuries.
• Wearable sensors to quantify of the impact and benefit of sleep on the recovery, performance and overall wellbeing of athletes.
• Using big data and machine learning methods to identify robust imaging markers of anxiety, depression and pain, and how these relate to sports injuries.
• The development of highly sensitive MRI acquisition methods to non-invasively assess the brain’s response to pain after injury and during recovery.
• Investigating novel MRI approaches to assess microvascular damage and blood-brain barrier disruption after mild traumatic brain injury.

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