PhD studentships

Every year, I accept one or two new PhD students to my group. Imperial has a number of scholarships for potential PhD candidates:

  1. Please see this useful information page with guidelines for applying for studentships and important milestones for your PhD research.
  2. If you are an overseas student, please explore opportunities here.
  3. Imperial President’s scholarships.
  4. James Dyson Foundation Scholarships.
  5. UK Research Council funded scholarships.

If you want to join my group through one of these scholarships, please get in touch with me (t.nanayakkara at imperial.ac.uk). I would want to know the following:

  1. Whether you have a bachelor degree in engineering with a 2:1 or first class (or equivalent GPA for overseas students), and a masters with 70% marks or higher.
  2. It is strongly encouraged to have your own initial scientific questions and experimental methods in the area of soft robotics. This is to make sure you have already thought about a scientific research project.
  3. Mention why you think you fit in my group. You can have a look at the kind of things existing PhD students are doing. In essence, we make robotic prototypes to test different hypotheses about how physical circuits in the body and the environment might be contributing to solve computational problems to do with surviving in an uncertain environment.

The Imperial President’s Scholarships are very competitive. In general, a successful candidate has to show:

  1. Evidence of ranking highly in their class, e.g. top 10%.
  2. Recognition of academic achievement e.g. Dean’s list, 1st in class, prizes for academic achievement.
  3. Evidence of research experience through examples of relevant research projects and placements in academic groups or industry.
  4. Examples of academic impact, e.g. attendance at conferences, paper publications, winning further funding, and clear evidence of how the applicant’s research is significant in the field.
  5. Strong reference letters with consistent and convincing statements as to the candidate’s academic ability and research potential.

We take Intellectual Property (IP) very seriously. Therefore, all PhD students, please refer to the Imperial College guidelines for IP of research students.