Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [History and Politics] From University of Central Lancashire

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Integrated Photonic and Electronic Systems offers a four year PhD course in collaboration with University College London. At the end of the first year, successful students are awarded an MRes degree. The MRes is also available as a standalone course. The programme is intended to produce engineering leaders with a high level of understanding and skills in photonic systems, in particular the fundamentals of the field together with the necessary research expertise, technology, systems and applications knowledge.

Accordingly, the programme aims to:

develop strong business awareness in MRes graduates and foster an understanding of the foundations of management theory and the connections between technology, management and entrepreneurship;

encourage and appreciation of applications drivers for photonic systems technologies and the business, road-mapping and cost analysis tools used to determine the adoption of new technological solutions.

expose the students to a range of technology areas and provide an experience a variety of different research and development cultures

encourage students to study across discipline boundaries, with a resultant enhancement of interdisciplinary understanding;

equip the graduates of the programme with generic communications skills as well as research specific training to enable them to make a seamless transfer to doctoral research programmes at either Cambridge or UCL

Learning Outcomes

The MRes course will equip its graduates with a wide range of skills and knowledge, fully equipping them for both further research and for industrial work in the area of integrated photonic and electronic systems.

Graduates will have developed a thorough technical understanding of photonic systems, with a firm grip of the fundamentals in the broad areas of communications, biophotonics, displays, lighting and processing. All students will be equipped with the fundamental concepts in this area, and will have opportunity to specialise in a chosen area (eg, chemical/bio-sensors, computer vision, control, digital filters, image processing, RF circuits, network software, optical transmission networks, et cetera). They will also be equipped with an understanding of business practice and commercial exploitation routes for ICT-based technologies.

They will have cultivated a range of transferable and specialist skills allowing them to engage with business, innovation and technology development. These include:

skills in the modelling, simulation and experimental evaluation of photonic systems;

critically evaluating and finding alternative solutions to technical problems;

carrying out surveys of existing technologies and research topics, and provide a detailed and critical overview of a technology or research area;

academic research skills developed through practical experience in mini-projects;

team-working and time-management;

critical reasoning;

By the end of the PhD, successful students will have produced original work making a significant contribution to knowledge in the area of integrated photonic and electronic systems.