Motivation: Understanding how the seafloor evolves is critical for environmental monitoring and subsea infrastructure inspection. Natural processes and human activities drive changes over time, yet detecting these reliably remains challenging. Improved methods could enable early identification of risks to ecosystems and infrastructure, while providing quantitative evidence to support effective intervention and adaptive management.

Challenges: Documenting change in GNSS-denied subsea environments presents significant challenges. While changes occur over large spatial scales, change is often gradual, meaning that between seasonal or yearly deployments, the magnitude of change at any point on the seafloor remains below to the detection limit of even high-resolution mapping sensors. In addition, recognising and aligning scenes across repeated surveys is difficult due to navigation drift, evolving scene structure, and sensitivity to environmental conditions.

Research questions:

• How can evolving seafloor scenes be consistently recognised and spatially aligned across repeated subsea surveys in GNSS-denied environments?
• How can small seafloor changes be reliably detected when they are comparable to sensor noise?
• How can full-field uncertainty be modelled and propagated to support large-scale change analysis?

Approach: You will combine advanced robotic localisation and high-resolution mapping methods with advanced machine learning feature detection to enable evolving subsea scenes to be robustly aligned across repeat surveys. You will develop probabilistic models to detect subtle changes under noise and uncertainty. Your work will be validated using simulation, existing datasets from the University of Southampton’s Smarty200 AUV, and new data collected during field campaigns with the Ocean Perception group. Controlled experiments will also be conducted in the Maritime Robotics and Instrumentation Laboratory and its dedicated 8x8x6m deep-water tank.

Training and Environment: You will be part of the EU-funded BlueOcean Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network, working alongside 13 PhD researchers across leading European institutions. The programme provides interdisciplinary training in robotics, sensing, and AI for marine monitoring, as well as access to internationally recognised experts and industry partners. You will also undertake up to two three-month secondments with organisations including CNR (Italy) and Voyis Imaging (Canada).

Eligibility:

This PhD is funded via the European Commission. Recruitment is taking place following the European Code of Conduct for Recruitment of Researchers.

The School of Engineering is committed to promoting equality, diversity inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena SWAN award. We welcome all applicants regardless of their gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or age, and will give full consideration to applicants seeking flexible working patterns and those who have taken a career break. The University has a generous maternity policy, onsite childcare facilities, and offers a range of benefits to help ensure employees’ well-being and work-life balance. The University of Southampton is committed to sustainability and has been awarded the Platinum EcoAward.

The candidate:

To apply, please provide: 

If you are applying for this role, you must also apply for the PhD below.

https://www.phdscanner.com/opportunities/phd-vacancies-university-of-southampton-united-kingdom-robotic-monitoring-for-place-recognition-and-change-detection-in-dynamic-underwater-environments-c1cb18e8-c472-46e8-9a50-54c02cf5de44

Post title upon appointment will be MSCA Doctoral Network Research Fellow.

Closing Date: 31 Oct 2026

Section: Education, Research & Enterprise

Salary: £43,994 to £47,279 Per annum, subject to bi-annual review due to exchange rate
Full Time Fixed Term for 36 months

The post will work on a collaborative project between the University of Southampton and the University of Oxford investigating the potential of magnetic reconnection for space propulsion, as part of a three year long research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

The overall project is to broadly investigate the potential of magnetic reconnection as a method to accelerate plasma in future space propulsion systems. Various recent studies have suggested magnetic reconnection as a potential space propulsion method (DOI's: 10.1063/5.0320433, 10.2514/6.2023-0448, 10.1017/S0022377820001476), suggesting it has some promise in particular to achieve high specific impulse at high powers. The project is a collaboration between Southampton, led by Professor Charlie Ryan, and Oxford, led by Professor Dmitri Uzdensky. Oxford will develop the theoretical and analytical basis of the magnetic reconnection for space propulsion applications, whilst Southampton will focus on the experimental aspects. Using the world class vacuum facilities at Southampton we will develop a magnetic reconnection test article that can investigate magnetic reconnection at the small scale.

You will join a group of eight researchers working on different aspects of space propulsion, with the team based in the David Fearn Electric Propulsion Lab at the University of Southampton. It will be expected that the researcher actively engages with academic partners and with the research team through collaborative meetings, with opportunities to travel to conferences during the project duration.

It is desirable that the person has experience in designing and testing ion thruster technology, magnetic reconnection, or experimental testing of plasma devices within vacuum chambers, and a demonstrated aptitude for learning new fields of research. The person should have a PhD, or equivalent qualifications and experience, in aerospace engineering, experimental plasma physics in particular reconnection, or other ion beam uses. It is desirable that the person has experience of operating large vacuum chamber facilities, and a strong aptitude towards experimental testing. A strong track record of high-quality journal publications is an advantage.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact Dr Charlie Ryan: c.n.ryan@soton.ac.uk

At the University of Southampton, we value diversity and equality. The University recognises that employees may wish to have working patterns that fit with their caring responsibilities or work-life balance. Due consideration will also be given to applicants who have had career breaks for reasons including maternity, paternity or adoption leave, disability or illness. The University of Southampton is proud to hold Athena Swan Silver Awards.

Closing Date: 12 Oct 2026

Section: Education, Research & Enterprise

Salary: £41,064 to £44,746 per annum
Full Time Fixed Term until 30/09/2029