Find a PhD supervisor

Once you've identified the subject area you wish to research, you will need to find a supervisor for your project. All Doctoral Researchers are provided with a lead supervisor, who will act as the main source of academic supervisory support and research mentoring during your time as a Doctoral Researcher at the University.

Start your search

Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ for supervisors below to see who you think may be a great fit for your research area. Once you have identified they are able to offer appropriate supervisory support, you can start to reach out to staff using the contact details provided on their profile. 

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Professor Ye Htun Oo

Professor Ye Htun Oo

Professor of Autoimmune Liver Diseases and Translational Hepatology
Consultant Hepatologist
EDI Lead for the School of Infection, Inflammation and Immunology

Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy

Dr Oo is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

  • Hepatic immune tolerance
  • Dissecting pathogenesis and exploring causative factors of autoimmune liver diseases
  • Mechanism of drug induced liver injury
  • Developing new GMP cellular therapies in autoimmunity and transplantation
  • Gut – Liver axis immunology

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Professor Ye Oo directly, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, ...

Professor Alexander Orakhelashvili

Professor Alexander Orakhelashvili

Professor of International Law

Birmingham Law School

Professor Orakhelashvili has supervised or is currently supervising doctoral students undertaking research in the following areas:
• Aut dedere aut judicare as a customary rule
• The UN member states and individuals sharing international responsibility for the serious violation of international law committed during peace support operations
• Iran and Nuclear non-proliferation
• John Austin’s theory of law
• Implications of New Technology for Targeting under International Humanitarian Law






Dr Michael W. O'Reilly

Dr Michael W. O'Reilly

Honorary Senior Lecturer

Department of Metabolism and Systems Science

Joint PhD supervisor, Dr. Punith Kempegowda

Membership candidate tutorials MRCP(UK)

Dr Felipe Orihuela-Espina

Dr Felipe Orihuela-Espina

Senior Lecturer in Computer Science

School of Computer Science

fNIRS neuroimaging analysis and interpretation.

Dr Giulia Orioli

Dr Giulia Orioli

Assistant Professor

School of Psychology

Giulia is keen to hear from motivated prospective PhD students and early career researchers. Feel free to email if you wish to discuss projects and potential funding opportunities. Please include your CV and an overview of your research interests in your email.

Professor Luisa Orsini

Professor Luisa Orsini

Professor of Evolutionary Systems Biology and Environmental Omics
Alan Turing Fellow, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Co-founder and CEO of Daphne Water Solutions, Deputy Director of the Centre for Environmental Research and Justice (CERJ)

School of Biosciences

Postdocs

  • 2021-2023: Dr Anurag Anurag Chaturvedi: Bioinformatics working on evolutionary genomics. Independent Marie Curie Fellow

  • 2021-2022: Dr Narges Habibi: Computational Biology working on Environment and Human Health: Monitoring and Prevention Using AI 

  • 2020-2021: Dr Iestyn Staed: Engineer working on RAEng/Innovate UK project to commercialize Daphne Water Solutions
  • 2019-2020: Dr Rafael Orozco, Chemical Engineer working on a BBSRC funded grant to assess the market value of upconverted biowaste generated via the ...

Dr Gerardo Ortega

Dr Gerardo Ortega

Associate Professor

Department of Linguistics and Communication

I am always interested in discussing the possibility of supervising PhD students to pursue research on the acquisition of sign languages as a second or first language, sign language processing, the interface between gesture and sign.

Professor Matt O'Shea

Professor Matt O'Shea

Clinical Professor of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology
Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology
Surgeon Commander, Royal Navy

Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy

Professor O’Shea supervises Master's and Doctoral students in clinically-relevant, infection-related research, primarily focussed on the human host immune response to mycobacteria (M.tuberculosis), vaccine development and novel TB diagnostics and therapeutic approaches.

If you are interested in studying any of these subject areas please contact Professor Matt O'Shea directly by e-mail, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email mds-gradschool@contacts.bham.ac.uk

For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, ...

Professor Deryk Osthus

Professor in Graph Theory

School of Mathematics

Deryk Osthus is happy to supervise PhD students in Combinatorics. If you are interested, please email him.

Professor David Oswald

Professor David Oswald

Professor in Computer Security
Head of Research of Computer Science

School of Computer Science

  • Murdock, main supervisor, since 2018: FaultFinder: From Faulty Output to Fault Model --- An Automated Approach

  • Pemberton, main supervisor, since 2018: BioLeak: Side-Channel Analysis of Fingerprint Matching Algorithms

  • Aldoseri, main supervisor since 2018: Security of TEEs

  • Zhang, main supervisor since 2019: Next-generation security protocols for medical devices

  • Spielman, main supervisor since 2021: SCAvenger - Attacking Machine Learning with Side Channel Attacks
  • Jacqueline, main supervisor since 2021: Capability architectures: attacks and defenses

Dr Martin Ottmann

Dr Martin Ottmann

Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies
Head of Research in the School of Government

International Development Department

Martin welcomes new PhD applications exploring the characteristics of civil wars, peace processes and post-conflict development, including especially those interested in advanced statistical research methods.

Martin is currently working with the following PhD candidates:
• Owen Frazer
• Hermawan



Dr Tim Overton

Reader in Microbial Biotechnology

School of Chemical Engineering

We are interested in using information about the molecular microbiology and physiology of bacteria to develop processes. We focus on three main areas:

- Development of bioprocesses that generate high-value products (for example recombinant protein biopharmaceuticals, polymers, small molecules);
- Understanding biofilms and they ways in which their structure and function are regulated and might be modulated; and
- Developing processes that are designed to eliminate contaminating bacteria from product ...