Students complete 2 Mini Projects of 8 weeks duration and a 13-week Midi Project during their 1st year. These projects are designed to help expand the research horizons of students, before they decide on their PhD topic. The midi project is normally expected to continue on into a PhD.
Mini Projects
The Mini projects are 8 weeks length (Nov – Jan and Feb – Apr), and run alongside other courses that students take during their MRes year. These projects give students an exposure to day to day research environment, and also help them explore new research areas that they have not worked in previously.
Midi Project
The Midi project is 13 weeks (May – Jul) and helps students test the ground with their PhD topic / PhD supervisor and Research Group before committing to doing their PhD in that area. Most students tend to continue on from their Midi to PhD in the same group.
PhD Project Topics
Throughout their 1st year, students are actively speaking to potential PhD supervisors around the University to help define a PhD project that fits their interests as well as the NanoDTC research themes and other requirements. This process is facilitated by the NanoDTC through opportunities to meet people from different groups soon after they start the programme.
The actual choice of PhD projects is made in March – April, from a list of projects that students may have asked potential supervisors to submit, or ones that supervisors might have submitted themselves. These proposals are all vetted by the NanoDTC External Advisory Board for ambition / risk and fit to NanoDTC themes before students choose one project that they are most interested.
Students then flesh out their chosen PhD proposal and defend it in front of a viva panel in July before embarking on their PhD in September. Brief descriptions of the PhD projects undertaken by our students are included below.
- All
- c2016
- c2017
- c2018
- c2019

Spectroscopy and Electrocatalysis for a Sustainable Future

Nano-structuring of battery electrode

Batteries to power a sustainable future

Photoswitches with ultra-fast response times

Cages for the Future – A caravan for molecules is on its way

Seeing is believing

Treating cancer using surfaces, light and gold

Controlling the uncontrollable

Lipids: The Missing Key to the Parkinson’s Puzzle?

Life from scratch

Stacking a market stall with fruit with hands 10,000 times the size!

Shining light on green hydrogen

Trapping light to open up our universe

From waste to fuel: quantifying sustainability

Functional Nanoelectronics and Quantum Materials

Quantum computers with industry-standard silicon technology

3D printing going nano

Watching what happens inside working batteries

Making a sustainable future more colourful

Capturing the Energy of Individual Electrons

Targeting the cure for Tuberculosis: Solid-state nanopore sensing

The coolest infrared sensor in the Universe

Brain navigation: connecting the eyes to the brain

Trapping liquids in a sponge

Jelly solar cells

Using light to make chemistry more environmentally friendly

Low power memory devices

From waste to hydrogen

The studies of battery degradation under the microscope

Nanorobots – not who you think they are

Making batteries ring

Materials for motion

A new way for brain cancer treatment

Catching sunbeams

The future is bright for generating new light

Smart surfaces for heating and cooling buildings using only sunlight

Making quantum fly – with microwaves

A new spin on electronics

Navigating hyper-dimentional voltage space

Flipping spins to boost the efficiency of LEDs

Radically different organic energy materials

Solar cells through the Looking Glass of electrons
