Research | The School of Natural and Computing Sciences

Research

Staff and students in the Department of Physics have a wide range of research interests grouped into five major themes:

We are particularly strong in the fields of nonlinear dynamics and chaos, and applying mathematical modelling to a wide range of problems in the life sciences.

Additional areas of research by individual staff members are described on individual staff pages.

In the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021), 35% of our outputs were rated 4* (world-leading) and 63% were rated 3* (internationally excellent). We made a joint submission in Unit 10: Mathematical Sciences with the Department of Mathematics, and ranked 23rd among UK institutions in this category. Our outputs were in the top 20% for submissions with 10-30 REF-eligible staff.

Our recent research has been funded by the Royal Society, Medical Research Council, European Food Safety Authority, Leverhulme Trust, EPSRC, NHS Grampian, British Heart Foundation, SULSA, BBSRC, Medical Research Scotland, Innovate UK KTP, Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology, Scottish Parliament, US Air Force, British Council, ESRC, CNPq (Brazil), and FAPESP (Brazil).

Learn more about our research themes

Applied Mathematics

A blackboard with chalk calculations showing the derivation of the Lyapunov exponent for a map

Chaos, emergent phenomena, mathematical physics, networks, nonlinear dynamics, numerical modelling.

Applied Physics

Scott Doyle looking into a chamber containing a purple plasma

Atmospheric physics, microfluidics, optics, photonics, plasma physics, semiconductor physics.

Astrophysics

Demonstration of spectral imaging enhanced by artificial intelligence. The target is asteroid Bennu, and the spectrum generated along a slit is shown to the left.

Gravitation, planetary astrophysics, stellar astrophysics.

Data Science

World globe with red dots corresponding to the location of terrorism events in 2015. Larger dots indicate more casualties. Data are taken from the Global Terrorism Database.

Artificial intelligence, data mining, feature engineering, information theory, machine learning, signal processing.

Physics and Mathematics of Biological Systems

Schematic showing presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons

Biophysics, medical physics, mathematical biology, molecular biology, computational neuroscience.

Student research

Student participation in research is a fundamental part of our degree programmes.

Students on the BSc Physics degree and joint degrees with Physics do a 4th year project over two terms, supervised by one of the academic staff. Recent projects covered topics such as magnetic resonance imaging, climate modelling, exoplanet transits, and optical tweezers.

Our MSc Data Science students do a data science project as the final course before graduation, making use of all the concepts and methods learned throughout the programme. This is supervised by an academic member of staff and sometimes external partners. Recent projects covered topics such as DNA replication, electrocardiograms, gravity waves, and the statistics of football.

PhD in Physics students are fully immersed in the Department's research activities. Many recent PhD theses can be accessed through the University's Digital Collections.

Image credits: Themes L to R - Roland Young, Scott Doyle, Charles Wang (and background), Marco Thiel, Murilo Baptista.