Award from Leverhulme Trust will benefit PhD studentships

The University of Strathclyde has been awarded £2.2M to fund 18 PhD studentships to advance nature-inspired research, some of which will benefit PhD study at the Business School.

The award from the Leverhulme Trust will fund four-year studentships, including three Master’s Plus PhDs for students from underrepresented minorities. An additional three studentships will be funded by the University.

Researchers will work within the newly created Leverhulme Trust Doctoral School in Nature Inspired Acoustics at Strathclyde. The interdisciplinary research aims to pioneer discoveries in basic materials science and measurement sciences to develop technologies for creating complex biomimetic acoustic structures and to develop biomimetic sensors such as miniaturised, low-energy, insect-inspired antennae. Biomimicry studies nature's scientific principles and uses them as inspiration for designs or processes with the goal of solving human problems.

Principal Investigator Professor James Windmill, Director of the Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering, is Director of the Leverhulme Doctoral School in Nature Inspired Acoustics and leads the School with three co-directors from the Engineering, Science & Business faculties: Professor George Wright, Department of Management Science; Dr K.H. Aaron Lau, Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry; and Professor Sonja Dragojlovic-Oliveira from the Department of Architecture.

The programme is one of eleven in all disciplines to be funded across the UK and the first such programme at Strathclyde.

It funds up to 18 scholars in an interdisciplinary priority research area for each successful institution -  fifteen four-year Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships, and three Master’s Plus scholarships.

Full information on the Leverhulme Trust awards is available here: https://www.strath.ac.uk/whystrathclyde/news/2024/strathclydeawarded22mofdoctoralstudentshipsfromtheleverhulmetrust/