Fluid mechanics underpins many established and emerging UK industries as well as critical societal issues such as air pollution, energy consumption, climate science, biology and medicine. Fluid mechanics is particularly strong in the UK, with world-class activity at several dozen institutions, involving hundreds of scientists and engineers. These institutions and individuals need to work together in order to benefit from the recent trend towards funding a small number of large grants. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us.

The aims of the UK Fluids Network are to:
  • develop cross-institution bottom-up research programs and proposals;
  • promote links with researchers and organisations in Europe and beyond;
  • provide resources to the research community worldwide;
  • act as a broker between UK academics and industry.
The UKFN funds:
  • Special Interest Groups (SIGs);
  • Short Research Visits (SRVs);
  • a website containing resources for all fluid mechanics researchers.
We encourage you to join the network and to play a part by:
  • signing up for the monthly newsletter
  • registering your expertise in our searchable database of researchers;
  • joining a Special Interest Group by emailing the SIG leader;
  • contributing talks or researcher resources.

Contact us

Downloads

UKFN logo

SIG booklet

People

Executive Committee

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Advisory Board

  • Dr Simon Bittleston, Schlumberger Gould Research
  • Dr Ton van den Bremer, University of Oxford
  • Prof. GertJan van Heijst, Burgerscentrum
  • Prof. Ann Karagozian, American Physical Society DFD and UCLA
  • Dr David Standingford, Zenotech

Institutional points of contact

Competitions

Thesis Prize

The UKFN Thesis Prize is awarded annually to the best postgraduate research thesis on any subject within fluid mechanics. The thesis must be for a doctoral-level degree awarded by a UK institution, and should not have been nominated in a previous UKFN Thesis Prize competition.

Internal and external examiners are invited to submit nominations at any time of the year. Nominations consist of a citation of 300-500 words from each Examiner. We also request that the nominator consult the nominee (author) before they enter their thesis for the prize, and include a statement confirming the nominee agrees to their thesis being entered. Please use this template for your nomination, and send it to competition@fluids.ac.uk. The nomination cut-off is 1st March of the year following the year within which the thesis was defended. For example, if the thesis was defended at any time between 1st January 2023 and 31st December 2023, nominations must be submitted by 1st March 2024. Once the nomination cut-off has passed, the winner is announced within two months. They will receive a prize of £500 and will be invited to present their work at the UK Fluids Conference.

The theses are evaluated by a panel comprising members of the UKFN Executive Committee. The theses are assessed only on the basis of the quality of the scientific work and the rigour of the presentation. We acknowledge that fluid mechanics is a wide discipline, and that the specialist expertise of the assessors does not cover the discipline’s breadth. For this reason, the assessors act as generalists and do not assess aspects of the thesis that require specialist expertise, such as the significance of the findings, the level of difficulty of the challenges overcome by the author, and the quality of the facilities that they use. 

For any question on the UK Thesis Prize, please email competition@fluids.ac.uk.

 

PAST WINNERS

Please note that since 2022 the review of thesis nominations has been carried out anonymously, i.e. the name, gender and institution of the nominees was not disclosed to the review panel.

 

2023 Thesis Prize

Winner:
Josh Shelton (University of Bath), 'Exponential asymptotics of parasitic capillary ripples and the complication of divergent eigenvalues' [link]

Runners-up:
Eleanor Johnstone (University of Manchester), 'The use of asymptotic methods in boundary-layer and interfacial phenomena' [link]
Ryan Doran (Newcastle University), 'Rotation, vortex dynamics and disorder in non-equilibrium Bose gases ' [link]

 

2022 Thesis Prize

Winner:
Craig Duguid (University of Leeds), 'The influence of convection on tidal flows' [link]

Runner-up:
Luke Masini (University of Liverpool), 'On Transonic Wing Shock Unsteadiness' [link]

 

2021 Thesis Prize

Winner:
Laura Cope (University of Cambridge), 'The Dynamics of Geophysical and Astrophysical Turbulence' [link]

Shortlisted:
Ricardo Constante-Amores (Imperial College London), 'Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations of complex multiphase flows with surfactants' [link]
Thomas Sykes (University of Leeds), 'Internal Dynamics of Coalescing Droplets' [link]
Clint Wong (University of Oxford), 'Fluid Flow Through Vegetation' [link]
Hans Yu (University of Cambridge), 'Inverse Problems in Thermoacoustics' [link]

 

2020 Thesis Prize

Joint Winners*:
Peter Baddoo (University of Cambridge), 'Analytic Solutions for Flows Through Cascades' [link]

Hannah Kreczak (University of Leeds), 'Rates of mixing in models of fluid devices with discontinuities' [link]

James Steer (University of Edinburgh), 'Experimental study of wave dispersion and stability in crossing seas and on sheared currents' [link]

*The six members of the incoming Executive Committee read the three entries on the shortlist and agreed that all three theses were outstanding and worthy of the thesis prize. Each member had independently ranked the theses and, when tallied, the overall result was a three-way tie, even after inclusion of second and third preferences. The Committee therefore agreed to award the top prize jointly to all three applicants.


2019 Thesis Prize

Winner:
Adrien Lefauve (University of Cambridge): 'Waves and turbulence in sustained stratified shear flows' [link]

Runners-up:
Paweł Baj (Imperial College London): 'Experimental investigation of wake development and mixing behind a multi-scale array of bars' [link]
Matthew Arran (University of Cambridge): 'Avalanching on dunes and its effects: Size statistics, stratification, & seismic surveys' [link]

 

2018 Thesis Prize

Winner:
Yi Man (University of Cambridge): ‘Swimming at low Reynolds number: slip boundaries and interacting filaments’ [link]

Runners-up:
Rowan Brackston (Imperial College London): ‘Feedback control of three-dimensional bluff body wakes for efficient drag reduction’ [link]
Simeng Chen (University of Liverpool): ‘An experimental investigation of drop impact phenomena with complex fluids on heated and soft surfaces’ [link]

Photo and Video Competition Archive

Documents

Minutes of meetings

 

 

List of emails sent to mailing list

Mailman archive

UK Fluids Conferences

2022 - University of Sheffield

2021 - University of Southampton (online)

Reference

Communications

Set of values

Proposal documents

Grants on the Web

Web pages giving details of the EPSRC grant for UK Fluids Network. There are multiple entries because it was a joint proposal between Cambridge, ICL, Leeds, Manchester, and Southampton.