- 4 September 2024
- Applications open
- 3 December 2024
- Applications close
- 12 February 2025
- Notifications sent
- 1 October 2025
- Course starts
How to apply
PhD applicants to CASCADE must apply through the normal route for the PhD in Computer Science. Please see the University's web pages for more information, in particular the funding deadlines, since we use the same deadlines for applications to the Centre. As an overview, applicants should:
- Identify a potential supervisor
- Contact them to discuss potential research areas
- Write a research proposal
- Submit the full application through the University's application portal
Important dates
Applying to do a PhD in the Centre is exactly the same as applying for a PhD in Computer Science with two important differences. First, you must address one or more of the broad research challenges and, second, funding will be guaranteed to successful applicants at the same time as the PhD offer is made. Applications will open at the standard time (in early September) and close at the usual funding deadline in early December. We will guarantee funding for successful applicants from late January. Based on this, an approximate timetable would be:
- Early September: applications open
- Early December: applications close
- December / January: application assessment and interviews
- Late January / early February: applicants informed and successful applicants guaranteed funding
- Early October: PhDs start
You should follow the directions on the University's applications page to submit your application. Please bear in mind the deadlines shown. The Department also has information on applying for PhD in Computer Science.
Research proposal
You will need to develop your own PhD project proposal as part of your application; a faculty member (who should be nominated as the supervisor on the application form) may provide feedback before the formal application is submitted. This is the most important part of an application and your chance to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject you want to research, and highlight your ideas for the PhD. The aim is to convince your application reviewers that you have a solid grounding in the area, can identify where there is research to be done, and an understanding of how to start on that. Here are some guidance notes on how to write a good research proposal.
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Write clearly and concisely. The proposal doesn't have to be long (5–6 pages) but does need to convey your ideas clearly to the reader.
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Structure your proposal so that it has introduction, related work, problem definition and proposed research sections (not necessarily with these names). Within these:
- Your introduction should give a high-level overview of the field. Explain why it is a particularly interesting time to do research in this area. Don't assume that this is obvious or that the reader will know what you are thinking.
- Related work discusses prior research in this field (highlight both positives and areas where there are gaps). However, this section does not need to be overly long since you will want to spend most of the proposal describing the novel area of research you wish to pursue.
- The problem definition clearly lays out the research challenge(s) that you intend to investigate. It should consider problems in the context of tomorrow's systems, not today's.
- Your proposed research is where you discuss how you will start to address these. Please try to include achievable goals for the first year in this section. Bear in mind you are not describing an actual solution to the challenges (that's what the PhD is for!) but how you will go about investigating novel directions.
- It is often helpful to include an anticipated schedule of work for the first year (at the granularity of a couple of months at a time). This shows you've thought through what needs to be done and can plan effectively.
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The research proposal is about your ideas for research, not about you as a person. By all means highlight any relevant work you have done in the past in this area, but it should be mainly focused on what you intend to do if you study here.
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Current research can also be found by looking at the top conferences in the area (for example ISCA, MICRO, HPCA, ASPLOS, PLDI, CGO). Look for papers being published that solve problems, as well as those that are more visionary and describe emerging challenges.