Civil Engineering (Transport) PhD

Our Transport and Operations Research Group is a leading centre of transport technology in Europe. We conduct world leading research that has commercial impact. You will be able to develop your work into ground breaking research through working with our experts.

By pursuing research in the School Engineering you will join an extremely successful research group focussing on transport and civil engineering. Our mission is to foster, promote and conduct research of international quality. This means that we attract high quality graduates and researchers and train them to international standards.

Research into transport and civil engineering is conducted by our Transport Operations Research Group (TORG), one of the leading centres of transport technology in Europe. We are central to key research in areas such as road user charging and smartcards, developing both the policy ideas and the underlying technologies.

We are currently running a world-leading trial in electric vehicles and public charging infrastructure in the north east of England. This research is informing policy, international standards development and its impact on energy demand and environmental emissions. We have also developed a low-cost wireless sensing technology, Motes, which is being used to monitor traffic pollution, help develop strategies to manage traffic demand and reduce emissions. This world-leading technology is being used commercially by several local authorities and it is being assessed for deployment in a number of high profile international cities.

Our main research areas are:

land use and network models
passenger transport and policy
transport and the environment
infrastructure design and telematics.

We supervise PhD students in the following areas:

freight and traffic loading
public transport management and operations
traffic management and control
road traffic safety and accident analysis
transport emissions and the environment
transport telematics and image processing
intelligent transport systems (ITS)
travel behaviour
highway design and engineering
operating speed models
environmental impact and monitoring of transport activities.