[Jobs] Funded PhD studentship (UK home-fee only): Adaptive Haptic Skill Transfer for Nuclear Teleoperation – University of Nottingham / UKAEA

[Ayse Kucukyilmaz (staff)]

Dear colleagues, 

We are advertising a fully funded PhD studentship within the Fusion Engineering Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) at the University of Nottingham, in collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). Due to funding restrictions, this studentship is open to UK Home-fee eligible candidates only.

PhD title: Adaptive Haptic Skill Transfer for Human–Robot Collaboration in Nuclear Teleoperation (Associate CDT project, start October 2026)

Summary: Robotic teleoperation in nuclear environments poses extreme challenges in safety, dexterity, and operator workload. This project investigates how adaptive haptic guidance and learning from demonstration can be used to:

• Improve human operator training through real-time skill estimation and tailored haptic feedback
• Enable robots to learn from expert operator behaviour, improving semi-autonomous assistance
• Integrate bidirectional learning between humans and robots to enhance shared performance

Supervisors:

Dr Ayse Kucukyilmaz (University of Nottingham)

Dr Nikhil Deshpande (University of Nottingham)

Industrial co-supervision with Dr Harun Tugal, RACE, UKAEA

Further details of the project is available here: https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/adaptive-haptic-skill-transfer-for-human-robot-collaboration-in-nuclear-teleoperation-associate-cdt-project-at-the-university-of-nottingham/?p192552

How to apply?

Please email academic supervisors (Ayse Kucukyilmaz: ayse.kuc...@nottingham.ac.uk; Nikhil Deshpande: nikhil.d...@nottingham.ac.uk) with the subject line: “CDT studentship: Adaptive Haptic Skill Transfer for Human-Robot Collaboration in Nuclear Teleoperation”

Attach:

• CV
• Cover letter
• Academic transcripts

Suitable candidates will be interviewed and, if successful, invited to submit a formal application.

Final (post-shortlisting) application deadline: Saturday, 31 January 2026

Early contact is strongly encouraged.

Please feel free to distribute.

Best wishes,

Ayse

**I work on a flexible work schedule and across different time zones, so you might receive emails from me at unusual times. Feel free to read and respond at a time that works for you. ** 

Dr Ayse Kucukyilmaz 

Associate Professor 

 

School of Computer Science

University of Nottingham

Room B31

Jubilee Campus

Nottingham, NG8 1BB 

w: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~pszak1/ 

Book time to meet with me

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