Five Fully–funded PhD Studentships – Optical Networks Group

Fully–funded PhD Studentships – Optical Networks Group

Five x 4-year PhD Studentships are currently available. General applications to the group are also welcome.

The Optical Networks Group are recruiting five new PhD students to become experts in low-power, high capacity, synchronised, intelligent optical communications systems and their enabling technologies of precise timing and photonic integration.

Applicants are invited to apply for fully funded 4-year UK home PhD studentships in the Optical Networks Group, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London (UCL), one of the world-leading optical communications research groups in the world.

Funding: The studentships cover UK home tuition fees and provide a tax-free annual stipend of £21,237 (2024-2025), increasing annually with inflation. Additional support available from the group will cover consumables, books, professional memberships and travel to workshops and conferences. PhD candidates may undertake additional work through postgraduate teaching assistance, consultancy, or internships with our industrial partners, subject to UCL policy.

In exceptional cases, we may consider international applicants. To be considered for this, international applicants will require research experience as well as publications in peer-reviewed conferences/journals in engineering, physics or photonics fields, for example in IEEE, Optica, the Science Publishing Group journals and the Nature Publishing Group.

Start date: Three studentships have a 2024-2025 academic year start date (ideally September 2024 but this is flexible); two studentships (both supervised by Dr. Eric Sillekens) have a later start date, one studentship a 2025-2026 academic year start date (ideally September 2025 but also flexible) and the other a 2026-2027 start date (ideally September 2026 but also flexible).

Introduction to the Optical Networks Group (ONG)

The work of the Optical Networks Group (ONG) focuses on optical communications systems and networks, operating on all time and length scales: from micrometre-scale photonic integrated circuits, enabling fast switching and sub-nanosecond clocking in future data centres, to 10s-kilometer-scale high capacity and low latency metro and access networks, to 10,000-kilometre-scale inter-continental optical fibre transmission systems through which data takes many milliseconds to travel. Whether you access the internet using your mobile phone or with a computer, these systems and networks form the global communications infrastructure that comprises the Internet. Ultimately, our research ensures that our Internet infrastructure keeps pace with the rapid growth in demand for data, enabling new applications such as augmented reality, quantum communications and autonomous car fleets.

ONG collaborates closely with over 50 leading industry and academic research groups around the world. Many come to use our state-of-the-art laboratory facilities, including our optical fibre transmission and network testbed, which is unique in the UK and only one of about five in academic laboratories worldwide.

Our state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and extensive industrial collaborations has enabled multiple world-record breaking results, including the world’s fastest ever demonstrated optical fibre data transmission speed of over 200Tbit/s and a record time to electronically recover the clock in data centres of under a billionth of a second.

We have a 30-year long track record of training very successful PhD graduates, many of whom have won multiple prizes and awards, having gone on to work in industrial companies and academic institutions across the world. Further information about ONG may be found on our website, and further general information about the Electronic and Electrical Engineering PhD degree offered by UCL may be found here. UCL is ranked 9th in the 2024 QS World University rankings.

[Embedded YouTube video of group recruitment video found at https://youtu.be/STfhru_2uUo]

Our available PhD studentships

Supported by a range of fellowships and awards secured within the group, we are recruiting the next generation of PhD students to become experts in future technologies to enhance the performance, efficiency and capabilities of future optical communications systems. Central themes and technologies include leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence for improved data routing efficiency, optical fibre capacity and power consumption, as well as the use of optical frequency combs, analogue and digital electronic technologies to generate, detect and process signal at high resolution, to enable high performance, highly synchronised networks with picosecond accuracies of both optical and wireless transmitters. Collectively, these five studentships aim to push the boundaries of current optical communication systems by integrating cutting-edge experimental and theoretical approaches.

Two studentships supervised by Dr. Eric Sillekens under his Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship on “Enabling power efficient optical communication through novel digital signal processing (EPIC DSP)”:

1. Semiconductor optical amplifiers and hollow core fibres could be used to demonstrate high throughput optical transmission that is also 30% more power efficient than current methods – crucial for minimising the power consumption of the global internet. This studentship will focus on the building of a testbed using semiconductor optical amplifiers and hollow core fibres. Using this combined approach, what are the experimentally determined limits on throughput and power consumption?

2. The use of semiconductor optical amplifiers, which have non-linear gain dynamics, introduces non-linear distortion that degrades data transmission performance in optical transmission systems. This studentship will explore the compensation of this distortion using machine learning algorithms and digital signal processing in concert with accurate modelling of optical transmission systems. What are the theoretical limits on throughput and what is the relationship between throughput, complexity and power consumption of different approaches?

One studentship supervised by Dr. Kari Clark under his Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship on “Ultra-low latency clock-synchronised transceivers for future 6G radio access networks”:

3. Enabling picosecond accuracy time synchronised optical networks interconnecting wireless antennas could enable centimetre accuracy positioning of wireless devices indoors and underground. This studentship will focus on the building of electronic hardware on field programmable gate arrays in an experimental testbed to compensate for the path differences that prevent picosecond accuracy synchronisation. Are greater accuracies than picosecond possible? What data transmission performance improvements can we gain?

One studentship supervised by Prof. Polina Bayvel under her Royal Society Research Professorship on “Optical Networks – seeing through the cloud”:

4. Maximising the capacity of optical networks requires intelligent, efficient routing of data through often complex topologies, as well as efficient use of the optical fibre by increasing the spectral bandwidth of light in fibre – so called ultra-wideband transmission. Can we use graph theory & AI to maximise both the fibre and overall network throughputs & experimentally demonstrate scenarios spanning cloud infrastructure and country-wide networks? What could we learn from the brain as a non-linear network with memory? What are the limits in future optical networks for the cloud?

One studentship supervised by Dr. Zhixin Liu under his EPSRC Open Fellowship on “Programmable and Robust Optical frequency combs to empower Stability and Precision for sEnsing and Communication Technologies (PROSPECT)”:

5. Co-design of photonic integrated circuits (PIC), optoelectronic and microwave subsystems to generate microwave signals with unprecedented low noise and detect them with sensitivity below the fundamental noise limit in conventional methods. Research is aimed at developing this new capability, which will significantly enhance the transmission capacity of optical and wireless communications, generating impact in data centre networks and 6G mobile networks.  

General requirements: We are looking for academically outstanding, enthusiastic students that have strong interest, experience and enthusiasm for hands-on experimental and/or theoretical research. We expect you to have at least an Undergraduate or Masters degree (or equivalent) in a relevant field to photonics and optical communications, such as electronic & electrical engineering, physics, telecommunications, mathematics or computer science. We expect at least a 2.1 overall degree classification with a 1st in your individual research project / dissertation.

Additionally, we highly value experience in scientific computing, such as with C, C++, MATLAB or Python, as well as hands-on design skills, such as of digital circuits using SystemVerilog, printed circuit boards and laser systems. Previous experience of research in an optical communications, optics or a physics research laboratory is an advantage as is relevant research experience. However, above all else, crucial is a genuine interest, motivation, energy and excitement about research.

Formal application process: Applicants must apply using the UCL online application system found here. Applications for these studentships above must be marked with “Optical Networks Group”. If your application is shortlisted, we will email you to arrange an interview. We perform interviews on-site where reasonably possible as it gives you a chance to tour our world-leading laboratories and department as well as talk to our existing PhD students and research staff.

Formal applications must include: a CV; a cover letter which includes a description of how your profile, knowledge, and skills suits either ONG’s research or the specific PhD project applied for as listed above; as well as the names of two referees with their email addresses. After your application is submitted, your referees will be provided with an email with instructions to submit a reference for you using UCL’s application system. Please remind your referees to do this and please contact us if this email does not reach them. We expect references to be submitted in a timely manner (no more than 1 week following the closing date for applications).

Informal inquiries: We also welcome questions and informal inquiries. To make informal inquiries about performing research in ONG or to inquire about the PhD projects we have available above, please feel free contact Prof Polina Bayvel (p.bayvel@ucl.ac.uk) who will be happy to answer any questions or to put you in contact with the academics responsible for our above advertised projects. You do not need to send us your CV with your informal inquiry, but it will help us to best answer your query if you provide one.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion: We believe that our research thrives thanks to our diversity – our research is driven forward by talented researchers and PhD students that come from countries and backgrounds across the globe. Almost a quarter of our members are female – about 10% higher than the UK average in engineering – and indeed have been extremely successful, including Wenting Yi, one of our PhD students who won the IEEE Photonics Society Award as well as an IEEE Women in Photonics Travel Grant in 2022. We also have a trained mental health first aider (MHFA) in the group.

We therefore strongly encourage applications from underrepresented backgrounds to apply – ONG is a great place for you to study.

Closing date for applications: The end of 31st August 2024. Please note that the deadline to apply for the studentship supervised by Dr Kari Clark has been extended to 25th November.