Supervisor: Prof Jasper van Thor, Molecular Biophysics, Imperial College London

Co-Supervisor: Prof Jon Marangos, Physics Department, Imperial College London

Location/Departments: Joined Life Science and Physics.

A fully funded four-year PhD studentship is available in the group of Professor Jasper van Thor, Imperial College London, with co-supervision by Professor Jon Marangos. The research will involve experimental work at XFELs and data analysis and technical development, also including ultrafast optics for XFEL experiments. The studentship is an exciting opportunity to work on the development for the implementation of ultrafast diffraction of crystalline materials with the aim to obtain ultrafast time resolution. Practically, the student will be trained in executing and analysing XFEL experiments, using end stations suitable for hard X-ray diffraction of nanocrystals of solid state materials. This will focus on revealing the ultrafast transition charge density dynamics of organic molecular crystals. Furthermore, the studentship will perform parts of method and code development in order to analyse and process a new class of XFEL experiments. Practical work in the Marangos group will involve work on the ultrafast light source to be used. This studentship will be supported by ongoing work in both the van Thor and Marangos labs, will involve the collaborative XFEL beamtimes and also involve the fundamental work on coding the geometrical processing of nanocrystallography.

Eligibility: You will have either a physics or a chemistry undergraduate degree with a 2:1 result or better. Additionally, a Masters degree at Merit level or better in a relevant physics or chemistry topic will be preferred. Only students classified as Home (UK) for fees purposes are eligible to apply.

Level of support: Home Studentship, fees and stipend

Application process:

The 4-year PhD studentship is jointly funded by STFC XFEL Physical Sciences Hub and Imperial College London Life Science Department.

Applications should be sent to Jasper van Thor by email (j.vanthor@imperial.ac.uk) and should include a CV and a cover letter with a personal statement. The CV should contain names and contact details for three references and details for courses taken and marks obtained.

For information about the project please contact: Jasper van Thor (j.vanthor@imperial.ac.uk) and Jon Marangos (j.marangos@imperial.ac.uk)