PhD Opportunities in Particle Physics

We are looking for prospective PhD students to work with us on a range of exciting research projects across particle physics.

Positions starting in October 2026

Positions starting in October 2026

For students aiming to start a PhD in October 2026 with a funded scholarship, the interviews will take place in February, so applications should be submitted by the 30th of January 2026.

Later applications will be considered until all positions are filled, or when new opportunities arise. We are happy to consider students with external sources of funding and for those students that deadline does not apply.

The available positions will be within one of our exciting experimental activities (see the Particle Physics Research pages) and will be discussed and agreed between the particle physics team and the successful candidate. To apply for a position please contact the Particle Physics PhD Admissions director Professor Neil McCauley and also make a formal online application (here) to the University of Liverpool.

 

PhD projects for 2026

If you are interested in a PhD on Particle Physics with us see the list of experiments in which we participate. Within the framework of these experiments, we offer 8-10 positions supported by STFC and other partners. Possible projects for 2026 include:

• Dark Matter searches with LZ detector and design of the next generation Dark Matter search detector
• Study of heavy flavour hadronic decays with LHCb
• Developing an offline analysis GPU farm and analysing heavy hadron behaviour with LHCb
• DarkSide-20k dark matter experiment and liquid argon detector R&D
• DarkSPHERE low mass Dark Matter Experiment
• Search for CP Violation via Neutrino Oscillations at T2K and Hyper-K
• Neutrino physics studies in the Fermilab Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) programme
• Neutrino physics studies in the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO)
• Precision Analysis of KLOE Data to Refine the Muon g−2 Hadronic Contribution
• Search for charged lepton flavour violation with the Mu3e experiment at PSI 
• R&D on High Voltage CMOS pixel sensors for future physics experiments
• Measurement of the hadronic contribution to the muon g-2 with the MUonE experiment at CERN
• Development of a new precision measurement of the Muon g-2 at JPARC

Funding

We offer fully-funded STFC studentships as well as positions funded from other sources. Although our funded positions are primarily targeted at UK residents or UK-based students, we can award a limited number of funded positions to overseas students. For more information about the STFC funded scholarships, including their terms and conditions, please also see this website: Studentship information for students – UKRI.

We welcome and support prospective students who are either able to self-fund their PhD studies or are planning to apply for or have already secured a funded PhD scholarship. We can point interested candidates to suitable schemes. More information about the level of funding needed to self fund is available at this University webpage.

English Language requirement

International students whose first language is not English are usually required to provide an IELTS (or equivalent) test score to demonstrate their proficiency in English. See this link for full details.