Postgraduate Admissions 2024

The Theory of Condensed Matter group usually accepts a little over half a dozen PhD students each year.

Research areas include Electronic Structure Computation, Soft Condensed Matter, Statistical Physics, Collective Phenomena, Strongly Correlated Systems and Biophysics. There is no fixed of projects, but you can find some representative examples in this slideshow. Prospective applicants are strongly encouraged to contact potential supervisors whose research is of interest. Even if you do not receive a reply, such an approach is often a useful first step.

Those potentially interested in applicants to begin in October 2025 are Artacho, Barnes, Béri, Castelnovo, Cicuta, Fusco, Jasak, Lamacraft, Peng, Schran, Souslov, Terentjev. However, please note that any Principal Investigator in the group can supervise postgraduate students.

The application process

You must apply for graduate admission to the Physics Department. Relevant applications reach TCM for further selection, shortlisting, and interviews.

In your application, you should specify that you are interested in projects in TCM. You should also include the names of all potential supervisors that you are willing to consider working with. Ideally, these should be ranked in order of preference (the names and the ordering can later be altered at or shortly after the interview, if invited). Above in this same page you find a list of supervisors who are likely to look for postgraduate students this coming academic year.

There is no strict application deadline but in order to receive full consideration in the TCM group, we strongly encourage students to submit their applications by the end of November. TCM will hold online interviews in January 2025. Interviews typically begin with a 10 minute presentation by the candidate on a project or extended piece of work they have recently completed, or on a research topic they are familiar with. This is followed by approximately 10 minutes of questions, not limited to the topic of the presentation. The interview panel will consist of three members of TCM.

Shortly after the interview, the applicants will be asked to provide a final ranked list of the supervisors they are willing to work with in TCM, which will form the basis for the final selection process before official offers are made.

TCM will continue to consider applications until all available positions have been filled. If you are unsure whether we are still accepting applications, please contact the TCM group administrator.

Funding

Your eligibility for funding from different sources will depend on your individual circumstances. Details can be found on the departmental website. Some of these sources have their own internal deadlines and you should make sure that your application is submitted in time.

Centre for Doctoral Training

Applicants interested in the computational materials modelling work of the group should also consult the (separate) admission procedure of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Computational Methods for Materials Science (the two applications are not mutually exclusive).