PhD project: New soft materials using adaptive design
Project description
Soft matter physics has an unmet need for a systematic approach to navigating complex parameter spaces in order to develop new composite materials. The parameters to be chosen usually involve both quantities of different ingredients and processing (e.g. temperature, mixing rate, order of ingredient addition etc.). In this project, you will investigate a new approach to discovering new soft materials to address challenges in personal care, food & drink and energy materials applications by exploiting the strengths of a combined experimental and machine learning approach. Using machine learning as part of an optimisation approach is often called adaptive design. The optimal next experiment is found by balancing a trade-off between exploring uncharted regions of parameter space and moving immediately towards what currently appears to be the best combination of parameters. This is an improvement on more traditional machine learning or statistical inference approaches because it copes better with small data sets and naturally incorporates iterations between lab experiments and computational analysis. In this project, you will use adaptive design to guide the choice of compositional and processing parameters so as to optimise characteristics, for example, the yield of multiple emulsion droplets, the tortuosity of channels in a gel, or the size of clusters of bridged droplets.
Project supervisor
- Professor Paul Clegg (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
The project supervisor welcomes informal enquiries about this project.
Find out more about this research area
The links below summarise our research in the area(s) relevant to this project:
- Find out more about Soft Matter Physics.
- Find out more about the Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems.
What next?
- Find out how to apply for our PhD degrees.
- Find out about fees and funding and studentship opportunities.
- View and complete the application form (on the main University website).
- Find out how to contact us for more information.