Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Aviation
The Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Aviation (DPSA), offers the opportunity to pursue a PhD within a vibrant research community addressing the challenges of the future of aviation. Students engage with interdisciplinary projects across engineering, science, and policy, supported by leading academic and industry partners.
Studentships are for 3.5 years and will provide full coverage of tuition fees, a travel budget, and an annual tax-free stipend for both home and international students. The overarching theme will be system-level problems that benefit from expertise from different areas of engineering.
Available Projects
There are no current opening at this time. Recruitment for October 2027 entry will begin in November.
Job openings
We regularly offer exciting opportunities to join our team of researchers, engineers, and professionals driving innovation in aviation and sustainability.
Please see below for our current openings.
Current Openings
There are no current job openings at the Institute. You can explore university-wide opportunities on the Imperial College London Jobs page.
Industrial partnership opportunities
We collaborate with industrial partners across a wide range of sectors to initiate and grow impactful, cross-disciplinary research. Partners can engage in multiple ways, including co-funding doctoral research, developing joint grant proposals, contributing to briefing papers, and participating in networking and knowledge-exchange events.
Learn more about our industrial partnership opportunities here.
Available projects
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).