Fully–funded PhD Studentship with the Optical Networks Group, Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, UCL

Applicants are invited to apply for a fully funded 4-year UK home PhD studentship in the Optical Networks Group, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London (UCL), one of the world-leading optical communications research groups in the world.

Funding: The studentship covers UK home tuition fees and provide a tax-free annual stipend of £21,237 (2024-2025), increasing annually with inflation. Additional support available from the group will cover consumables, books, professional memberships and travel to workshops and conferences. PhD candidates may undertake additional work through postgraduate teaching assistance, consultancy, or internships with our industrial partners, subject to UCL policy.

In exceptional cases, we may consider international applicants. To be considered for this, international applicants will require research experience as well as publications in peer-reviewed conferences/journals in engineering, physics or photonics fields, for example in IEEE, Optica, the Science Publishing Group journals and the Nature Publishing Group.

Supervisor: Dr Kari Clark

Start date: 2024-2025

Closing date for applications: 25th September 2024.

The work of the Optical Networks Group (ONG) focuses on optical communications systems and networks, operating on all time and length scales: from micrometre-scale photonic integrated circuits, enabling fast switching and sub-nanosecond clocking in future data centres, to 10s-kilometer-scale high capacity and low latency metro and access networks, to 10,000-kilometre-scale inter-continental optical fibre transmission systems through which data takes many milliseconds to travel. Whether you access the internet using your mobile phone or with a computer, these systems and networks form the global communications infrastructure that comprises the Internet. Ultimately, our research ensures that our Internet infrastructure keeps pace with the rapid growth in demand for data, enabling new applications such as augmented reality, quantum communications and autonomous car fleets.

ONG collaborates closely with over 50 leading industry and academic research groups around the world. Many come to use our state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, including our optical fibre transmission and network testbed, which is unique in the UK and only one of about five in academic laboratories worldwide.

Our state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and extensive industrial collaborations has enabled multiple world-record breaking results, including the world’s fastest ever demonstrated optical fibre data transmission speed of over 200Tbit/s and a record time to electronically recover the clock in data centres of under a billionth of a second.

We have a 30-year long track record of training very successful PhD graduates, many of whom have won multiple prizes and awards, having gone on to work in industrial companies and academic institutions across the world. Further information about ONG may be found on our website. UCL is ranked 9th in the 2024 QS World University rankings.

Project description: The studentship is supervised by Dr. Kari Clark under his Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship on “Ultra-low latency clock-synchronised transceivers for future 6G radio access networks”:

Enabling picosecond accuracy time synchronised optical networks interconnecting wireless antennas could enable centimetre accuracy positioning of wireless devices indoors and underground. This studentship will focus on the building of electronic hardware on field programmable gate arrays in an experimental testbed to compensate for the path differences that prevent picosecond accuracy synchronisation. Are greater accuracies than picosecond possible? What data transmission performance improvements can we gain?

General requirements: We are looking for academically outstanding, enthusiastic students that have strong interest, experience and enthusiasm for hands-on experimental and/or theoretical research. We expect you to have at least an Undergraduate or Masters degree (or equivalent) in a relevant field to photonics and optical communications, such as electronic & electrical engineering, physics, telecommunications, mathematics or computer science. We expect at least a 2.1 overall degree classification with a 1st in your individual research project / dissertation.

Additionally, we highly value experience in scientific computing, such as with C, C++, MATLAB or Python, as well as hands-on design skills, such as of digital circuits using SystemVerilog, printed circuit boards and laser systems. Previous experience of research in an optical communications, optics or a physics research laboratory is an advantage as is relevant research experience. However, above all else, crucial is a genuine interest, motivation, energy and excitement about research.

Formal application process: Applicants must apply using the UCL online application system found here, and must be marked with “Optical Networks Group”. If your application is shortlisted, we will email you to arrange an interview.

Applications must include:

• CV
• Cover letter which includes a description of how your profile, knowledge, and skills suits either ONG’s research or the specific PhD project
• The names of two referees with their email addresses. After your application is submitted, your referees will be provided with an email with instructions to submit a reference for you using UCL’s application system. We expect references to be submitted in a timely manner (no more than 1 week following the closing date for applications).

Informal inquiries: We also welcome questions and informal inquiries. To make informal inquiries, please feel free contact Dr Kari Clark (kari.clark.14@ucl.ac.uk) who will be happy to answer any questions. You do not need to send us your CV with your informal inquiry, but it will help us to best answer your query if you provide one.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion: We believe that our research thrives thanks to our diversity – our research is driven forward by talented researchers and PhD students that come from countries and backgrounds across the globe. Almost a quarter of our members are female – about 10% higher than the UK average in engineering – and indeed have been extremely successful, including Wenting Yi, one of our PhD students who won the IEEE Photonics Society Award as well as an IEEE Women in Photonics Travel Grant in 2022. We also have a trained mental health first aider (MHFA) in the group.

We therefore strongly encourage applications from underrepresented backgrounds to apply – ONG is a great place for you to study.