Research Studentship in Tidal Stream Energy

3.5-year D.Phil. (PhD) studentship starting October 2025

Project: Tidal Stream Energy

Supervisor(s): from Prof. Richard Willden, Dr Chris Vogel, Prof. Tom Adcock, Prof. Paul Goulart, Dr Amanda Smyth, Dr Federico Zilic de Arcos, Dr Emma Edwards

Tidal stream energy using hydrokinetic turbines to convert energy from water flows driven by the tides to generate power is an emerging and exciting renewable energy technology that has significant scope to contribute towards achieving climate change objectives and the transition to Net Zero.

Oxford is leading the flagship EPSRC-funded research programme CoTide: Co-design to deliver Scalable Tidal Stream Energy. CoTide seeks to develop and demonstrate new solutions and integrated tools and design processes for tidal stream energy that will help to reduce costs and support innovation to accelerate technology development and deployment. This is the largest tidal energy research programme in the UK with partners across four universities and more than twenty companies and leading developers. The multi-university team consists of around forty academics and researchers including doctoral students.

We are seeking doctoral students to work on the CoTide programme with interests in one or more areas of: turbine hydrodynamics and design, resource modelling, naval architecture and ocean engineering, system optimisation and control co-design. Candidates should identify their area of interest as part of their research proposal which accompanies their graduate application. You will work within the CoTide team using a range of numerical modelling and optimisation techniques supported by high performance computing facilities and / or experimental facilities including our current and wave flume.

Applicants could come from a range of backgrounds (e.g. engineering, physics, applied mathematics) and should have interests, and preferably experience, in a relevant area of fluid mechanics or offshore renewable energy.

The successful applicant will be a member of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics group and will join an Oxford-based team of over twenty five engineers with diverse interests spanning renewable energy and related problems. Further information on the CoTide project and the group can be found at

https://cotide.ac.uk/

https://eng.ox.ac.uk/efm/

Eligibility

This studentship is funded by the Department of Engineering Science and is open to both UK and international applicants, although fees will only be covered at the Home rate. Further details about fee status can be found here under the “Fee Status” tab.

Award Value

Course fees will be covered at the level set for Home/ROI students (£10070 p.a. in 2025/6) and a stipend (tax-free maintenance grant) will be paid at the UKRI rate (at least £19,237 p.a.).

Candidate Requirements

Prospective candidates will be judged according to how well they meet the following criteria:

• A first class honours, or strong upper second class degree in Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics or a related field,
• Ability to undertake experimental investigations and / or scientific programming in Matlab, Python, Fortran, C/C++, etc,
• Excellent written and spoken communication skills in English.

The following skills are desirable but not essential:

• Strong understanding and experience in computational or experimental fluid dynamics.

Application Procedure

Informal enquiries are encouraged and should be addressed to Prof. Richard Willden (richard.willden@eng.ox.ac.uk) in the first instance.

Candidates must submit a graduate application form and are expected to meet the graduate admissions criteria.  Details are available on the course page of the University website.

Please quote 25ENGCL_RW in all correspondence and in your graduate application.

Application deadline: noon on 3rd December 2024

Start date: October 2025

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