Opportunities

PhD in Robust Design Methods for Aircraft in Turbulence

Posted on: 24.08.2026

Deadline: until filled

3.5 year fully-funded PhD studentship with no nationality restrictions

Applications are invited for a Ph.D. studentship in Aeronautics at the Brahmal Vasudevan Institute for Sustainable. This is an industrial DPSA project with Voltitude Ltd. The successful candidate will join a vibrant research community building a sustainable future at the heart of London. This project will investigate aeroelastic design strategies to support the robustness of operation of highly efficient aircraft in atmospheric turbulence.

There is much interest in developing high-altitude long-endurance unmanned vehicles as communication platforms. They provide a lower-cost reconfigurable alternative to low-Earth-orbit satellite constellations, but their highly optimised designs are also very sensitive to adverse atmospheric conditions. This becomes both a design challenge, to identify the optimal aeroelastic trade-offs that minimise risks to the vehicle’s structural integrity, and an operational challenge, since not much is known about atmospheric turbulence at the altitudes and velocities in which these vehicles operate. This project will address both challenges by both developing a suitable simulation environment to support aeroelastic analysis in turbulent wind, and correlation with flight tests carried out by Voltitude, our industrial partner. The successful candidate will join a team of researchers unlocking the opportunities of low-speed stratospheric flight, both inside and outside Imperial as part of the Enduring Atmospheric Platforms programme run by the UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency.

Applications are invited from candidates with (or who are expected to gain) a first-class honours degree or equivalent in aerospace engineering, or a related discipline. This is a mostly computational project and successful candidates will demonstrate team outstanding software development and mathematical modelling skills. The studentship is for 3.5 years and will provide full coverage of tuition fees (incl. overseas), a travel budget, and an annual tax-free stipend of circa £23,000.

To learn more about Imperial College, please go to www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg. To apply for this fully-funded studentship, please go to www.imperial.ac.uk/study/apply/postgraduate-doctoral/application-process/. Please address your application to the Department of Aeronautics (Research Group:Aero). 

Two Research Associate positions on flight physics of high-altitude communications platforms

We have two 2-year postdoctoral research associate (PDRA) positions at the LoCA Lab to support ARIA's Enduring Atmospheric Platforms programme. The objective of the programme is to unlock a new layer of wireless communications through high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS) that provide continuous coverage from the stratosphere. The two positions are on independent but interlinked projects aiming to provide a better understanding of the flight physics of this new class of vehicles, develop suitable design and operation strategies, and predicting its interactions with the atmospheric turbulence. This is computational work using both modern software and hardware tools for large-scale simulation and optimisation. Successful candidates will need to demonstrate outstanding software skills. 

_{(Image from NASA Earth Observatory)}

Interested candidates, please contact Prof Rafael Palacios (r.palacios@imperial.ac.uk) with a full CV and a short cover letter. Please use "PDRA HAPS" in the email subject. We expect appointments with a starting date by October 2026. See below for some additional details on each postdoc role.

UPDATE (5.8.26): Job positions are now open in the Imperial portal. Please follow the links below to submit your applications. 

PDRA in co-design of a HAPS fleet for wireless communications (apply here by 25 Aug)

This project will build, using state-of-the-art conceptual design methods, the inner layer computational architecture for HAPS sizing and mission planning and will integrate it within a larger analysis framework for communications systems, developed together with collaborators at Imperial's Communications and Signal Processing group. The objective is to optimise fleet design (type, number and characteristics of individual HAPS) and operation protocols to support a reconfigurable stratospheric communications network that is both robust to atmospheric conditions and meets Quality of Service metrics for ground users at minimum cost. HAPS are typically very light vehicles flying at extremely low velocities and the research will need to explore the flight physics modelling fidelity necessary to support the optimisation work. The work requires an aeronautical engineering degree, advanced simulation skills, research-level experience in optimisation methods, and a strong aptitude for team work.

PDRA in atmospheric turbulence forecasting methods for HAPS (apply here by 19 Aug)

HAPS are very sensitive to atmospheric conditions, but our knowledge at the the vehicle/turbulence interactions at the altitudes and speeds typical of HAPS is very limited. This will be addressed in this project, which will build a dedicated turbulence prediction capability for HAPS in Imperial's state-of-the-art forecasting tool. This will require meteorological scale simulation over the flying regions to produce a synthetic ground truth, enriched with data from testing campaigns by our collaborators at Voltitude and vehicle level aeroelastic simulations to identify metrics of interest. The successful candidate will work with Prof Rafael Palacios and Prof George Papadakis, and should have a research-level background in computational fluid dynamics, outstanding data and software skills, and a strong aptitude for team work.

_{Updated on 19.08.2026}