Our first Convergence Science PhD programme
The School of Convergence Science received funding from 海角社区’s EPSRC Doctoral Landscape Award for 16 PhD students to commence their projects in 2026.
Each student has a ‘home department’ as well as being part of the School of Convergence Science cohort. The projects, put forward by researchers from across 海角社区’s departments, all require cross-disciplinary collaboration and a systems thinking and impact-by-design approach.
Alongside their research projects, students will receive specialised training that provide the skills to embed convergence science and mission-led science approaches into their work, future career, and research visions. With a particular focus on impact by design, complexity science and communication to diverse stakeholders.
The students, projects and their supervisors are listed below.
DLA 2026 cohort
- Autonomous sensing and tracking under severe uncertainty
- Computational brain injury modelling: Linking mechanics, biology, and real-world impact
- Convergent nature-based and sensing solutions for heat-resilient farming in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Developing sustainable supply chains for cellulosic textiles
- Efficient embedded transformer neural networks for science and beyond
- Embodied neuromorphic AI for few-shot, continual robot learning via physical neural networks
- Health as a stochastic process: Learning and intervening on latent pre-clinical trajectories
- High-throughput detection of phosphonate biomarkers using ambient mass spectrometry
- How do we stop burnout in safety critical domains? Identifying the workload biomarkers of burnout for GPs and firefighters
- Muon tomography for non-invasive geotechnical investigations
- Quantifying and integrating delineation uncertainty in adaptive radiotherapy using novel statistical & ML approaches
- Quantum cryptanalysis of NIST post-quantum cryptographic protocols
- Reimagining nylon for a sustainable future
- The role of neural development in multimodal intelligence
- Trustworthy multimodal agentic AI for precision oncology: Unlocking novel biomarkers in lung cancer via explainable foundation models
- Unifying matter: A foundation generative model for materials and molecular design
Student: Gabriella Rajpoot
Supervisors: Davide Amato (Aeronautics), Dave Clements (Physics), Michael Peel (Physics)
Theme(s): Space, Security and Telecoms
Student: Daniel Costache
Supervisors: Mazdak Ghajari (Dyson School of Design Engineering), David Sharp (Brain Sciences), Tom Parker (Brain Sciences)
Theme(s): Health and Technology
Student: Cassandra Halliday
Supervisors: Kristine Belesova (School of Public Health), Ali Yetisen (Chem Eng), Firat Guder (Bioeng) + external supervisors
Theme(s): Health and Technology, Sustainability
Student: Manomay Lala-Raykar
Supervisors: Agi Brandt-Talbot (Chemistry), Andrea Bernardi (Chemical Engineering), Jason Hallett (Chemical Engineering)
Theme(s): Sustainability
Student: Guanxi Lu
Supervisors: Alexander Tapper (Physics), Wayne Luk (Computing), Gavin Davies (Physics), Hongxian Fan (Computing)
Theme(s): Human and Artificial Intelligence
Student: Peter Dunniece
Supervisors: Andrew Davison (Computing), Jack Gartside (Physics)
Theme(s): Human and Artificial Intelligence
Student: Mahima Ghosh
Supervisors: Mauricio Barahona (Mathematics), Reza Skandari (Business School), Franco Sassi (Business School)
Theme(s): Health and Technology
Student: Thomas Cronly
Supervisors: Robbie Murray (Physics), Zoltan Takats (MDR), Leon Barron (School of Public Health), Peter Biggins (Civ Eng) + external supervisors
Theme(s): Space, Security and Telecoms
Student: Sude Umac
Supervisors: Arnab Majumdar (Civil and Env Eng), Olga Kostopoulou (Surgery & Cancer)
Theme(s): Health and Technology
Student: Rebecca Nasterlack
Supervisors: Tiago Gaspar (Civil & Environmental Engineering), Nicholas Wardle (Physics)
Theme(s): Sustainability
Student: Vasudev Joy
Supervisors: Ben Glocker (Computing), Wenjia Bai (Brain Sciences), Alexandra Taylor (Royal Marsden Hospital), David Bernstein (ICR)
Theme(s): Human and Artificial Intelligence
Student: Killian Burke
Supervisors: Cong Ling (Electrical and Electronic Engineering), Florian Mintert (Physics)
Theme(s): Space, Security and Telecoms
Student: Emily Sherrell
Supervisors: Jose Jimenez Zarco (Life Sciences), Charles Romain (Chemistry), Maria Charalambides (Mechanical Engineering)
Theme(s): Sustainability
Student: Anna Obure
Supervisors: Dan Goodman (Electrical and Electronic Engineering), Marcus Ghosh (Life Sciences), Florence Iacaruso (Francis Crick Institute)
Theme(s): Human and Artificial Intelligence
Student: Catriona Lucas
Supervisors: Guang Yang (Bioeng), Jan Lukas Robertus (NHLI), Anil Bharath (Bioengineering)
Theme(s): Human and Artificial Intelligence
Student: Gabriel Greenstein
Supervisors: Alexander Ganose (Chemistry), Joey Bose (Computing), Shelly Conroy (Materials)
Theme(s): Human and Artificial Intelligence