Exercise Science, Biomedical Engineering: Fully Funded PhDs in Biomechanics and in Data analytics applied to movement coordination in children (RS824)

Scholarship open to UK fee-eligible students only

Funding providers: EPSRC and the Waterloo Foundation 

Funding duration: 3 years  

Subject areas: Exercise Science, Biomedical Engineering 

Project start date: 1 October 2025 (Enrolment open from mid-September)

Supervisors:            

• PhD 1: Dr Chelsea Starbuck, Professor Gareth Stratton, Dr Claire Barnes 
• PhD 2: Professor Huw Summers, Professor Gareth Stratton 

Aligned programme of study:  PhD in Sport and Exercise  Science/Biomedical Engineering 

Mode of study: Full-time 

Project description: 

We have 2 PhD scholarships available, linked to a Waterloo Foundation project on the development of motor skills in children – Moves-UP. The 2 PhD students will work alongside the wider Moves-UP team, including academics in the departments of Sports & Exercise Science and Biomedical Engineering at Swansea University, clinical staff within the Swansea Bay University Health Board and teachers within a local Swansea schools network. The Moves-UP project addresses physical movement difficulties in children. Specifically, Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), a neurodevelopmental condition which impairs motor planning and coordination, complicating the acquisition of skills such as running and balancing. Learning difficulties further affect cognitive processing, motor planning, and execution, while limited opportunities for physical play restrict skill development, perpetuating a negative cycle of reduced activity and motor skill acquisition. Evidence suggests that targeted interventions, including adapted physical education, free play, and sports-based programs, can improve children's physical movement skills. The Moves-UP project works with children from across the Swansea area, in a school-based project and uses multiple assessment approaches: Inertial Monitoring Units (IMUs), high-resolution kinematics and a dynamic motor coordination assessment (Short Form Dragon Challenge) to compare the movement patterns of children with suspected DCD to their typically developing peers. The collective aims of the programme are to: 

1. Help practitioners quickly and efficiently identify and diagnose children with movement difficulties and DCD.  
2. Develop effective approaches for improving movement quality and life skills in children with movement difficulties and DCD. 

The 2 PhD studentships will involve interaction with both Sport & Exercise Sciences and Biomedical Engineering departments, with a lead department identified for each. They will provide specific support for the Moves-UP programme in the following areas: 

PhD 1 – biomechanics of movement coordination in children (Lead department: Sport and Exercise Sciences) 

• This PhD will examine how motor coordination and control develop during walking and running transitions in children with motor difficulties and their typically developing peers. Using both a high-resolution marker-based capture system and open-access markerless systems, the project will assess interlimb coordination and joint kinematics during gait and dual-task conditions. Embedded within the wider Moves-UP programme, the candidate will receive training in advanced motion analysis, biomechanical modelling, and statistical approaches to human movement. Analytical methods will draw on coordination dynamics and motor control analysis (e.g. vector coding) to evaluate movement patterns in relation to task demands. Outcomes will contribute to the development of accessible assessment tools and support early identification and intervention for children with motor challenges in real-world settings. 
• Expertise required: the PhD is open to graduates from a biomechanics or motor control background (e.g. Sport and Exercise Science, Biomedical Engineering or another relevant discipline). Experience with motion capture or coding is desirable but not essential. 

PhD 2 – data analytics for diagnosis of neurodiverse conditions (Lead department: Biomedical Engineering) 

• The aim is to identify fingerprints of movement that differentiate children’s movement ability and quantify the degree of any coordination disorder. Working with over 100 children across 5 schools in the Swansea Bay area, wearable movement sensors (accelerometers) have been used to capture children’s activity and movement patterns at millisecond resolution over 7 days a week. The central objective of the PhD project is to develop novel mathematical and computational analyses of the data to obtain information across multiple timescales, to visualise these dense datasets and to construct easily interpretable, robust metrics for health practitioners, teachers and parents. A wide range of signal processing algorithms will be tested, e.g. dynamic time warping, correlation, and Fourier analysis to extract important features in the data streams. Dimensional reduction techniques will then be used to provide key indicator metrics from the multidimensional datasets. Alongside this, multidimensional statistical tests will be incorporated. Deep learning based analysis will be pursued alongside these traditional approaches. Here, visualisations of the data in 2-D ‘movement maps’ will be used with image-based neural networks. 
• Expertise required: the PhD is open to graduates from a numerate or computational background (e.g. Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Computing degree) AND those from a Sport and Exercise Science background who are comfortable working in a numerical environment and interested in developing their analytical skillset. 

For more details please see here: https://www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate/scholarships/research/engineering-epsrc-waterloo-phd-exercise-science-2025-rs824-.php