Trio of PhD students receive national recognition of their research

A trio of outstanding Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) PhD students have been recognised for their achievements with the award of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) doctoral prizes.

Qiongyue (Yvonne) Kang, Graham Hesketh and Paulo Meannea were announced as recipients of the EPSRC doctoral prize awards. The awards introduced to help universities retain and recruit the best PhD students, increasing the impact of their PhD, and to improve retention of the very best students in research careers.  

The trio started their research in January. Each student receives EPSRC support through the grant which funds them for up to two years. 

Qiongyue welcomed the announcement of her award. She said: “I am very pleased to receive this fellowship for the recognition and reward of my work in the area of multimode erbium doped fiber amplifiers for mode division multiplexing.

“I would like to thank again my supervision team Professor David Richardson and Dr Shaiful Alam and my colleagues for their guidance, help and encouragement throughout the journey of my PhD.

“The doctoral prize fellowship acts as a stepping stone of my academic career and I will definitely work harder and contribute more to the photonics community in the years to come.â€?

Graham added: “My research explores methods of all-optical regeneration of fiber optic communication signals with the aim of increasing the information capacity of the internet to cope with ever increasing demand.

“The EPSRC doctoral prize has given me the unique opportunity to develop my research with an academic freedom that may not otherwise be available under a conventional large research project. This is complemented by the support of world leading researchers and facilities here at Southampton's ORC, of which the recently upgraded research optical fiber network that runs between the ORC and universities across Britain is an invaluable part."

Learn more the the EPSRC's Doctoral Prize Awards.

We are recruiting for a host of exciting PhD projects. Find out what it could be like taking a PhD at the Optoelectronics Research Centre.

Come along to our PhD Open Day on March 16th to find out more.