PhD Scholarships, Dublin City University, Ireland (2018)

The Fraunhofer Project Centre for Embedded Bioanalytical Systems at Dublin City University (FPC@DCU) develops microfluidics-based solutions for decentralised bioanalytical testing in areas like in-vitro (“Point-of-Care”) diagnostics, life-science tools, biopharma, agrifood, environmental and industrial mo­ni­toring. The research and technology development of the FPC@DCU therefore operates at the very promising but also challenging crossroads of microsystems engineering and the life sciences. In its present start-up phase, the FPC@DCU focuses on high-level process integration and automation of centrifugal microfluidic “Lab-on-a-Disc” systems for “point-of-use” testing of biosamples such as body fluids, food, drink, bioprocess samples and water.

Your mission:

The FPC@DCU will recruit a highly ambitious student with strong competence for fluidic simulation. The successful candidate will study for a PhD in the field of FPC@DCU’s centrifugal microfluidic “Lab-on-a-Disc” (LoaD) technologies, specifically:

- Modelling and simulation of centrifugal hydrodynamics of the LoaD’s constitutional elements such as metering, mixing and valving structures by commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, e.g. OpenFOAM or COMSOL;

- Development of parametrised, low-dimensional descriptors of these fluidic elements and their validation against experiments and simulation;

- Development of lumped-element methods, akin to the well-established design software SPICE for electronic circuitry, to allow full system-level simulation of functionally highly integrated fluidic LoaD systems composed of these elements;

- Incorporation of design-for-manufacture rules and manufacturing tolerances in software tool to allow virtual prototyping of LoaD systems with predictable functionality.

The successful applicant will meet DCU’s minimum entrance requirements for registration as full-time PhD students (including English language proficiency where necessary).

Further details:
PhD Scholarships, Dublin City University, Ireland (2018)