PhD Studentship: Complexity of flow motion

PhD Studentship: Complexity of flow motion

Bioengineering Research Group

Location:  Highfield Campus
Closing Date:   Friday 01 July 2016
Reference:  601515BX

Project Reference: EngSci-BIO-137

Project Themes:  Bioengineering and human factors, Mechatronics, signal processing and control.

A major challenge facing public health is the increased incidence and prevalence of cardio-metabolic and related diseases, e.g. diabetes and obesity. Changes in flowmotion, the spontaneous oscillation in tone of blood vessels, may precede other measures of autonomic dysfunction that occur in these diseases and could help in their early detection or treatment. Laser Doppler flowmetry provides a non-invasive technique for investigating the motion of haemoglobin and its oxygenated state allowing the assessment of microvascular function and possibly disease state.

This project is an innovative collaboration between Engineering and Medicine that will investigate the relationship between patterns in blood flow and oxygenation signals and their association with diseases and their progression. Computational techniques for time, frequency domain and complexity analysis will be developed and applied to data gathered from a wide set of volunteers using a variety of different stimuli. This may be complemented by the design of further volunteer-based studies to investigate more descriptive and discriminating challenges for data acquisition in particular disease cases.

This PhD offers a unique interdisciplinary programme of work within the Faculties of Engineering and the Environment and Medicine at the University of Southampton. The PhD candidate will work closely with engineers, basic scientists and clinicians and may undertake physiological measurements on volunteers. It is an exciting opportunity for an ambitious and numerate graduate to develop interdisciplinary research skills applied to pressing health questions in our society.

The ideal candidate will have biomedical signal processing or time-series modelling experience and a good knowledge of computational analysis/modelling approaches. The candidate must have a strong background in engineering sciences and an enthusiasm to communicate across traditional discipline boundaries.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Dr Andy Chipperfield, Bioengineering Science research group, Email: A.J.Chipperfield@soton.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 2380 59 8344.

To apply please use the following link http://www.southampton.ac.uk/engineering/postgraduate/research_degrees/apply.page? and select Faculty of Engineering and the Environment.