Postgraduate Opportunities

My current and recent PhD students are studying the following projects:

Fundamental Aspects of inkjet printing; Inkjet Printing of mammalian Cells; Fabrication and Application of Ordered Aluminum Oxide Nanopores; Mechanical Properties of Gold Nanostructures; Fabrication and Properties of Silver Conductors by direct-Write methods; Biomedical Inkjet Printing.

There are apportunities for PhD projects in the following research areas: Drop interactions during inkjet printing, Inkjet printing ceramics, Biosensors and nanostructured sensors, Inkjet printing hybrid cell-containing materials and structures, Mechanical properties of nanostructured materials, Mechanical properties of brittle materials.

Related Links

• Blog

Research Group(s)

• Biomaterials
• Ceramics and Inorganics

Research Institutes

• Photon Science
• UMARI

Brian Derby is Professor of Materials Science in the School of Materials. He is based in the Materials Science centre. His research spans three of the research groups within the School of Materials: ceramics and glasses, biomaterials,  nanostructured materials.

Brian graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in 1978 and obtained his PhD, also from Cambridge, in 1981. He spent 1 year working at the Centre d'Etudes Nucleaire de Grenoble as an ESA Fellow before spending 2 years in Cambridge University Engineering Department as a Research Fellow. He was in the University of Oxford, Department of Materials from 1983 -1998 as a Research Fellow, Lecturer and Reader in Materials Engineering, where he was Director of the Oxford Centre for Advanced Materials and Composites. He was appointed Professor in Materials Science at the Materials Science Centre in 1999. He was elected a member of the World Academy of Ceramics in 2004.

Brian Derby's research interests span a wide range with a focus on the processing-structure-mechanical properties relation in ceramics and glasses, biomaterials and nanostructured materials. Recently he has been at the forefront of research into the development of inkjet printing as a manufacturing tool. He has particular interest in developing methods of characterising materials and processes in situ. Much of this work has been carried out collaborating with industry and other research groups across the world.

• Fundamental aspects of fluid/substrate interactions in ink jet printing.
• Manufacture of structural and functional components by inkjet printing.
• Fabrication of tissue scaffolds by novel 3-Dimensional manufacturing methods.
• Deposition and patterning of living cells and biological molecules by inkjet printing.
• Mechanical properties of nanostructured materials.
• Manufacture of nanostructured materials using nanoporous anodic alumina templates.
• Characterisation of the mechanical properties of tissues using nanoindentation.
• Characterisatio of the mechanical properties of tissues using acoustic microscopy.