Opportunities

Harnessing microbes and cold plasma to concentrate and destroy ‘forever chemicals’ in food associated ecosystems (ECOSOLUTIONS DFA)

A fully-funded opportunity to develop novel, cross-cutting techniques to eliminate PFAS 'forever chemicals' from the environment. We will identify natural bacterial isolates that can absorb these chemicals, then develop chemoattractive traps to concentrate the resulting PFAS-rich bacteria. Cold plasma technology will then be used to degrade the recalcitrant carbon-fluorine bonds that make PFAS so difficult to eliminate.  

This project is co-supervised with William Durham (Sheffield) and James Walsh (York), and will include a three month placement at our industrial partner (Plasma Fresh).

Application deadline: November 30th 2025.

Learning the “brain” of bacteria: decoding bacterial behaviour on surfaces to thwart infection (EPSRC DLA)

This fully-funded project builds on our previous work on the motile pathogen Pseudomonas aeriginosa, which moves on surfaces using molecular grappling hooks. We will develop new machine learning approaches to automatically identify different classes of behaviour by these moving cells, allowing us to investigate the different roles that individual bacteria can play. This will reveal how bacteria divide roles among themselves to maximise infectivity.

This project is co-supervised with William Durham (Sheffield).

Application deadline: January 15th 2026.

Identifying how chemicals shape microbial diversity through high-throughput ecological screens

Microorganisms influence each others' growth by changing their chemical environment: essential metabolites can be secreted and shared, resources can be competed over and toxins can be cooperatively broken down. In this fully-funded project, we will use picolitre microdroplets to monitor these interactions in thousands of different communities simultaneously. Coupling these measurements with ecological theory will allow us to understand the implications for chemically-mediated interactions for the structure and function of microbiomes.

Application deadline: January 21st 2026 (UK students only)

Self-funded PhD in microbial ecology

We are accepting applications from students with their own funding who would like to pursue a research programme in microbial ecology. 

For more details, or to apply, please click the above links. 

None currently available