Opportunity for a funded PhD place at EPCC

With around 20 students, EPCC has a thriving PhD programme covering a wide range of topics. Studying at a world renowned centre for HPC and data science, students work with their supervisors on topics that are not only at the cutting edge of research but also solve real-world problems that the wider community cares about. We have a fully funded PhD place available at EPCC, starting September 2024, for a home fees status student. 

One of the advantages of EPCC is that our staff cover a wide range of technical areas across HPC and data science, and as such our PhD students are involved in researching many different topics. 

This not only means that we are able to facilitate a large number of research interests in and around HPC and data science, finding the appropriate expert in EPCC who fits their topic, but furthermore PhD students are surrounded by fellow students who work across many different areas, which really helps to foster interdisciplinary activities. As an example, one of my students who is working on FPGAs was chatting with another of our students who is working on optimising sparse matrix–vector multiplication (SpMV). They then realised that it would be really interesting to combine these two areas (SpMV on FPGAs), which resulted in a paper. Presenting papers and attending conferences tends to be one of the aspects of PhD study that students enjoy the most as it enables them to travel the world, meet likeminded people and find out first hand how their work compliments the rest of what is happening at the state of the art.

Why choose EPCC?

All our PhD students are allocated a dedicated desk and sit together in the Bayes Centre, on the same floor as the majority of EPCC staff. There is a regular PhD student seminar series, and at our recent PhD research showcase event there was significant interest across EPCC around the research being undertaken by the students. 

We also have many strong links with industry which can result in opportunities for internships (which typically last between six and twelve months) at these companies; for example my students have undertaken internships at organisations including Renault, HPE Research, and Pacific North West National Laboratory. Whilst internships are entirely optional, they can be a nice way of providing exposure to industry and demonstrating how to link research to the real world.

Next steps

We have a list of suggested PhD projects, but crucially this is not definitive. If you have an idea for something outside this list involving HPC or data science, or there's just a general area that you would like to work in, then in the first instance please either contact one of our academics directly or reach out by emailing phd@epcc.ed.ac.uk and we can advise. 

This fully funded, full time place must start in September 2024 (and we can help you with the application process) and is limited to those who are home fees eligible.