PhD projects in Soft Matter Physics
Coronavirus (Covid-19) updates
If you are a prospective student please see the University’s Covid-19 webpages for up-to-date details, advice and support.
About Soft Matter Physics
"Soft matter" is a convenient term for materials that are easily deformed by thermal fluctuations and external forces. In short, it refers to ‘all things squishy’! Everyday examples include paint, blood, milk, spreads and ice cream. Soft materials share several characteristic features, e.g. that their building blocks are intermediate in size between atoms and grains, and this is crucial to understanding their behaviour. In the Edinburgh Soft Matter Physics group, we use experiments, computer simulations, and theoretical calculations to understand colloidal and granular model systems for phenomena ranging from jamming to bacterial colonies and to rationally design novel soft materials for use in applications ranging from foods to energy materials.
Available PhD projects
A list of current PhD projects in Soft Matter Physics is shown below. Click on each project to find out more about the project, its supervisor(s) and its research area(s).
- Active Self-Assembly of Colloidal Structures
- Bringing Order to a ‘Zoo’ of Colloidal Gels
- Coco butter stabilised emulsions
- Composite particles at liquid interfaces
- Controlling the microbial generation of nitrous oxide in wastewater treatment; a pathway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
- Developing tractable model systems for filamentous bacteria in wastewater treatment
- How do Dense Suspensions Flow?
- Locomotion in Granular Materials
- Measuring particle size in messy systems using machine learning for sustainable (re)formulation
- Moving and growing among entanglements: the role of DNA in the physics of bacterial swimming and aggregation
- New soft materials using adaptive design
- Sustainable 3D bicontinuous gels for energy-storage applications
- Sustainable self-assembly of colloidal crystals for photonic or energy-storage applications
- The physics of active colloids
- Theory and Simulation of Microbial Swimmers and Subcellular Liquid Crystals
- Topologically Active Polymers (Experimental and/or Computational)