PhD Studentship: Development and Application of Next-Generation Instrumentation to Quantify the Chemical Drivers of Particle Oxidative Potential

Application deadline: All year round

This 4-year PhD project is fully funded; students who are eligible to pay tuition fees at the Home rate are eligible to apply. The successful candidate will receive an annual tax-free stipend set at the UKRI rate (£21,805 for 2026/27) and tuition fees will be paid. We expect the stipend to increase each year. The start date is January 2027.

We recommend that you apply early as the advert may be removed before the deadline.

Air pollution exposure is a major global health issue, responsible for millions of premature deaths each year and is a leading cause of respiratory and cardiovascular disease worldwide. Despite compelling evidence associating exposure to particulate matter (PM) with adverse health effects, the most harmful PM chemical components remain unclear. Current air quality regulation targets total PM mass regardless of composition, an approach increasingly recognised as inefficient, since it treats all particles as equally hazardous, irrespective of their chemical composition or biological activity.

Oxidative potential (OP), the capacity of PM to deplete antioxidants and generate reactive oxygen species, has emerged as a leading metric for capturing the biologically relevant hazard of PM, reflected in its inclusion in the recently updated European Union Air Quality Directive. Unlike mass-based measurements of PM, OP reflects particle chemical reactivity and their capacity to promote oxidative stress, offering a route to identifying which components and emission sources are most harmful to health.

We have recently pioneered the development a novel instrument that provides continuous, high time-resolution quantification of OP which has been deployed in proof of concept laboratory and field studies. Building on this state-of-the-art platform, this studentship will advance the next generation of the instrument, apply it in controlled laboratory studies at the Manchester Aerosol Chamber (MAC), and deploy it in real-world field campaigns to generate comprehensive high time-resolution OP datasets to determine the PM components and emission sources which drive OP.

The student will first lead the design, optimisation and characterisation of an improved instrument iteration, gaining hands-on experience in analytical instrument development, including microfluidics, chemical reagent optimisation, and laboratory performance testing, establishing it as the leading platform for real-time OP quantification.

Second, the student will deploy the instrument at the MAC, a leading atmospheric simulation facility, to investigate the chemical mechanisms driving PM oxidative activity. Experiments will explore how particle composition of different PM emission sources and atmospheric processing, including photochemical ageing, humidity, and interactions between redox-active metals and secondary organic aerosol, influence OP.

Third, the student will deploy the instrument at an established urban air quality monitoring site, generating high time-resolution OP datasets alongside complementary PM composition measurements, gaining critical insights into the temporal variability and PM components which drive OP.

Applicants should have, or expect to achieve, at least a 2.1 honours degree or a master’s (or international equivalent) in chemistry, biochemistry, atmospheric or environmental science, chemical engineering, or a related discipline, and a genuine enthusiasm for hands-on laboratory and field measurements.

We strongly recommend that you contact the supervisor(s) for this project before you apply. Dr Steven Campbell (steven.campbell@manchester.ac.uk) would be pleased to discuss this project further with interested candidates prior to application. Please include details of your current level of study, academic background and any relevant experience and include a paragraph about your motivation to study this PhD project.

Advert information