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 that the nominee agrees to their thesis being entered. Please download this template for your nomination, and email it to info@fluids.ac.uk. The nomination deadline is 15th June 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 2025 and 31st December 2025, nominations must be submitted by 15th June 2026. 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 questions about the UK Fluids Network Thesis Prize, please email info@fluids.ac.uk.