Join the Team

Funded postdoctoral positions will be advertised through Aston University and major national and international recruitment platforms such as jobs.ac.uk and EURAXESS.

We are also happy to support strong candidates who wish to develop independent fellowship applications with the group. Relevant schemes may include Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships, Royal Society Newton International Fellowships and other UK or international fellowship programmes.

Prospective fellowship applicants should get in touch well in advance of the relevant deadline, with a CV and a short description of their research interests and proposed fellowship direction.

Applications are welcomed from students interested in undertaking a PhD within the SAM Group.

Fully funded PhD studentships will be advertised as they become available. We also welcome enquiries from prospective students who are eligible for external scholarships or who wish to develop an application for independent PhD funding.

Research projects within the group broadly include:

• Automated and data-guided polymer synthesis and materials discovery
• Sustainable, renewable and degradable polymers
• Responsive polymers and polymer nanoparticles

Projects are normally developed around a specific scientific question and can combine polymer chemistry with other disciplines such as engineering, computer science or biology.

For more information about these areas and our current work, see the Research pages.

We welcome enquiries from prospective PhD researchers from the UK and internationally. Applicants intending to apply through external scholarship programmes, including government or institutional scholarship schemes, are encouraged to contact us early so that there is sufficient time to develop a suitable research project and funding application.

If you are interested in joining the group, please contact Sam Parkinson through the contact form on the Aston Research Explorer profile, including a CV and a short description of your research interests.

Some of the most important challenges in the world sit between traditional disciplines. We are interested in collaborations that combine polymer synthesis, automation and data-driven experimentation to address questions that cannot be solved from a single perspective.

We welcome ideas that bring together complementary expertise, open up new scientific directions or create new ways to understand and control complex materials. If you see a point of connection with our research, get in touch with a short outline of the challenge, the approaches you are interested in and where our work might intersect.