Advance your career with the QEPNT Hub
Join the UK Hub for Quantum Enabled Position, Navigation & Timing and help us shape the future of PNT technology.
PhD Opportunities in PNT research
Expressions of interest are invited for fully funded 3.5 year studentships based in the transformative Quantum Enabled Position, Navigation and Timing (QEPNT) Hub to overcome the challenges of miniaturising robust quantum sensors for a wide variety of position, navigation and timing (PNT) end-use applications. Successful candidates will be based at one of the nine universities that comprise the QEPNT Hub.
These PhD positions align with the UK National Quantum Technology Programme, contributing directly to the EPSRC funded UK Hub for Quantum Enabled Position, Navigation, and Timing (QEPNT).
Mission 4 of the £2.5Bn UK National Quantum Strategy states the intent of the UK that ‘By 2030, quantum navigation systems, including clocks, will be deployed on aircraft, providing next-generation accuracy for resilience that is independent of satellite signals’.
QEPNT was launched in December 2024 to support the goals of this mission, bringing together leading academic partners from Glasgow, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Imperial, Loughborough, Queen’s Belfast, and Strathclyde, alongside NPL and over 30 UK companies, creating a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and collaboration.
Why This Research Matters
The UK Government’s Blackett review revealed the nation’s critical reliance on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for essential services, including electricity distribution, telecommunications, financial systems, and transportation. Disruption of GNSS signals, whether through jamming or spoofing, could result in more than £1Bn/day economic impact.
In response, the UK established a National Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Office and added PNT vulnerabilities to its national risk register. A key recommendation is that critical national infrastructure should have technology capable of providing holdover time in the event of GNSS signal loss.
Current technologies, such as atomic clocks, inertial sensors, and LiDAR systems, are too bulky, expensive, and fragile to be used for these applications.
Research Objectives
Below are a flavour of potential objectives that could be part of a project:
- Device Modelling: Design components for integrating atomic systems or to simulate performance of single-photon detectors. Receive training on the leading commercial electromagnetic solvers leveraging innovative methods such as inverse photonic design optimisation to achieve compact, high-performance devices.
- Advanced Fabrication: Gain training on fabrication and engineering of new electronic, photonic, laser and sensor components to meet the needs of miniaturised QEPNT systems, within world-class facilities.
- Experimental Characterisation: Training and access to specialised laboratories for characterising atomic systems, photonic integrated circuit devices, metamaterials, frequency combs, narrow-linewidth laser systems, or single-photon detectors, ensuring they meet key performance metrics for real-world applications.
- Ranging systems: Build and characterise LiDAR systems in NIR, SWIR, and visible wavelength ranges with greater robustness to background light and penetration of obscurants using SPAD arrays.
- Field Trials: Practical training in the deployment of quantum technology based systems in a wide range of potential scenarios, including land, air, and sea-based demonstrations.
- Atomic System Development: Develop skills including simulation, setting up complex optical systems in laboratory settings for cold atom and vapour-based atomic systems, and system optimisation for real-world scenarios in portable applications.
- Artificial Intelligence and Digital Twins: Develop AI-based tools and digital twins to help QEPNT researchers adapt and test quantum technology for land systems (i.e. autonomous vehicles), sea and air systems.
What We Offer
- Collaboration with industrial partners in the quantum technology ecosystem.
- Involvement in the UK Hub for QEPNT and other UK Quantum Hubs, including opportunities for collaboration with other Early Career Researchers across the hub/s, and access to a lively programme of summer schools, networking and training opportunities.
- Access to world-class facilities and training in advanced simulation, fabrication, and characterisation techniques.
- Opportunities to publish in high-impact journals and present at leading international conferences.
- Support for career development in academia or high-tech industries.
- Entrepreneurial, intellectual property, media and public outreach training to enable students many options for future careers.
- Support for career development in academia or high-tech industries.
Requirements
The ideal candidate will have a 1st class degree in a STEM-related subject. No prior nanofabrication experience is required. You must be self-motivated, have good interpersonal skills, and be interested in conducting interdisciplinary work that combines theory, simulation, fabrication and characterisation.
If you would like to submit an expression of interest for this opportunity, please submit:
- A recent CV
- Personal statement explaining your research interests and ambitions, and your preferred placed of study and supervisors that you are interested in working with (among the 9 QEPNT partners).
University degree transcripts (PDF) to info@qepnt.ac.uk by 31st January 2026
Funding
If successful with the application, the student will receive funding available to cover tuition fees for UK/EU applicants for 3.5 years, as well as receiving a tax-free stipend at the rate of £ £19,237 for the 2024-25 session (increasing annually). (note that this varies according to University).
We will accept expressions of interest from UK/EU and International students.
Non-EU students who receive an offer will require a Confirmation of Acceptance of Studies (CAS) in order to apply for a Visa and may also need an Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) certificate.
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