Browse by subject

PhD opportunities: Electronic Engineering

Compare 14 doctoral research opportunities connected with Electronic Engineering, including project summaries, funding and application deadlines.

Electronic Engineering

Next generation silicon photonic modulators

University of Southampton

About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor David Thomson and Dr Bharat Pant This project will focus on research into the next generation of optical data communication technology enabling key applications such as high-performance computing and artificial intelligence to thrive. Many aspects of modern life have become reliant on high bandwidth data communication, pushing the associated technology to its performance limits and contributing significantly to global energy use.

Location
Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
30 September 2026
Funding
Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

Electronic Engineering

Piezoelectric Nano-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems (NOEMS) resonators for neuromorphic computing

University of Southampton

About the Project Supervisory Team: Dr Yoshishige Tsuchiya, Dr Bruce Ou and Prof Jize Yan Physical reservoir computing is attracting much attention as a simple and energy-efficient option of neuromorphic computing and our focus is to use Micro or Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS/NEMS) technologies to meet the system requirements of low-power consumption, high device density for high speed processing, and suitable nonlinearity and memory capacity at the same time.

Location
Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
30 September 2026
Funding
Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)

Electronic Engineering

Programmable silicon photonic circuits

University of Southampton

About the Project Supervisory Team: Prof David Thomson, Prof Professor Goran Mashanovich & Dr Bharat Pant Closing Date: 30 September 2026 This project will focus on the development of reliable and efficient programmable photonic integrated circuits (PICs) on a silicon photonics platform.

Location
Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
30 September 2026
Funding
Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

Electronic Engineering

Automated probabilistic programming and learning methods for robotic behaviours in an uncertain and changing world

University of York

About the Project Nearly all programmable computing systems are based by design on exact logic, under the assumption of a "perfect" mathematical world. By extension, logic used in robotics and other autonomous systems is also exact. However, all cyber-physical systems must interact with a world using sensors and actuators that by the very nature of this interaction, are not fundamentally exact or deterministic.

Location
York, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Electronic Engineering

Automatic inspection of cement pavement health condition using GPR

Kingston University

About the Project The health and structural integrity of cement pavements are critical to ensuring road safety, longevity, and cost-effective maintenance. Traditionally, the inspection of a pavement’s condition relies on labor-intensive manual methods, which can be time-consuming, costly, and prone to human error.

Location
London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Electronic Engineering

Autonomous Robotic Management of York Institute for Safe Autonomy Solar Farm

University of York

About the Project With the commissioning of a new solar power farm for research at York's institute for Safe Autonomy, we are looking for enthusiastic students with an interest in creating robots that can move between solar panel arrays to autonomously perform cleaning, inspection, mapping, and site maintenance tasks.

Location
York, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Electronic Engineering

Bio-inspired Systems, Neuromorphic Hardware, Unconventional Computing

University of York

About the Project Applicants are invited in one, or a combination of, the following areas: Bio-inspired Systems Wonders in Nature, including our own brains, have fascinated scientists and en- gineers for decades if not centuries. There has been huge international research interest in studying all kinds of nature-inspired computation and its applications, including evolutionary computation, neural computation, and swarm intelligence.

Location
York, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Electronic Engineering

Faraday Insitution PhD/EngD studentship

Imperial College London

About the Project “Small Features; Big Impact - Characterising the porous microstructure of battery electrodes.” How can we rigorously quantify and reduce uncertainty in microstructure-derived parameters used in electrode-scale battery models by linking state-of-the-art FIB-SEM characterisation and AI-driven image analysis to performance simulations?

Location
London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)

Electronic Engineering

Fully Funded PhD Opportunity: Next-Generation Top Cells for Silicon based Tandem Photovoltaics

Australian National University

About the Project Overview An open position exists for a fully funded PhD scholarship in the development of next-generation, silicon-based tandem solar cell technologies. This project will focus on both theoretical and experimental science: applicants will be developing and characterising top cell materials to pair with high efficiency crystalline silicon, using state-of-the-art modelling and experimental infrastructure.

Location
Canberra, Australia, Australia
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

Electronic Engineering

Intelligent Manipulation of Deformed Objects via Visual–Tactile Fusion

University of Portsmouth

About the Project Applications are invited for a self-funded, 3 year full-time or 6 year part-time PhD project. This project investigates intelligent robotic manipulation for deformable or soft objects by integrating visual and tactile sensing. Unlike rigid objects, deformable items (e.g., soft tissues, food products, or packaging materials) present significant challenges for robotic manipulation due to their unpredictable shapes and compliant properties.

Location
Portsmouth, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Electronic Engineering

Novel Compound Semiconductor Devices for Digital Cryo-Electronics

Lancaster University

About the Project Huge resources, both nationally and internationally, are being deployed for the development of quantum computing. While there are several different quantum computing platforms, one of the leading ones is based on superconducting qubits, because solid state solutions are more scalable. However, superconducting qubits require an awkward combination of mK temperatures and several RF signals per qubit to operate them.

Location
Lancaster, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)

Electronic Engineering

Precision agriculture by robotic data collection and knowledge based analysis

University of York

About the Project Robots are becoming increasingly essential in the practice of precision agriculture due to labor shortages, higher productivity needs, and the demand for sustainable farming practices.

Location
York, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Electronic Engineering

Resource-saving design and manufacturing of Printed Circuit Boards

Kingston University

About the Project Challenge: In the UK we each create a huge amount of electronic waste—the second highest in the world. A large and critical component of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) comprises of printed circuit boards (PCBs).

Location
London, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Self-Funded PhD Students Only

Electronic Engineering

Surface chemistry and gas reactions in hollow-core optical fibres

University of Southampton

About the Project Supervisory Team: Professor Austin Taranta, Professor Natallie Wheeler and Dr. Hesameddin Mohammadi Hollow core fibres are transforming applications in communications, sensing, and high-power laser delivery. The aim of this project is to study the fundamental reactions that control the stability and lifetime of these novel fibres which guide light through a gas-filled core instead of solid glass.

Location
Southampton, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
Deadline
Year-round applications
Funding
Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)