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Postgraduate research project

Liquid chromatography for clinical silicon photonics

Funding
Fully funded (UK only)
Type of degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Entry requirements
2:1 honours degree View full entry requirements
Faculty graduate school
Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
Closing date

About the project

This ground-breaking PhD project aims to develop a new class of sensors for clinical diagnostics based on cutting-edge silicon photonics research. Adding the capability for chromatography to our existing sensors for mid-infrared absorption spectroscopy will enable more powerful data extraction. This will provide more information for machine learning to improve the accuracy of clinical decision-making.

The project will explore medical applications for this technique with our partners at University Hospital Southampton (UHS). One example is liquid biopsy for cancer diagnostics: we hypothesise this method will offer improved discrimination between cancerous and non-cancerous blood samples without the need for a surgical biopsy.

You will join a larger team working on clinical and oceanic applications of silicon photonics based in the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics (ZIPN) at the University of Southampton (UoS).

This is a multidisciplinary and inclusive community that includes:

  • collaborators from Chemistry and Medicine at UoS
  • the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility at UHS
  • the National Oceanography Centre Southampton
  • Physics at the University of York. 

The successful candidate will study the detection of biomarkers by designing, fabricating and testing sensors for monitoring their unique spectral absorption fingerprints in order to understand the composition of human blood samples. You will also develop microfluidic chromatography for integration with the photonic sensors to obtain further proteomic and lipidomic information from the same samples.

You will be based in ZIPN, where the chromatography and silicon photonics chips will be fabricated in state-of-the-art cleanrooms, and will conduct experiments in both UoS laser laboratories and UHS clinical laboratories.

There will be opportunity for you to work with clinicians to define how the sensors are used to maximise the medical utility and societal impact. 

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