I’m delighted to announce that I have been awarded an EPSRC Open Fellowship to lead a new programme on drop collisions and their collective behaviour, spanning scales from nanometres to kilometres. Associated with this are two new Research Fellow Positions – details here.
When two tiny drops approach each other, a nanometre-thin layer of gas or vapour is trapped between them. Whether this film collapses or not decides the outcome: the drops may bounce, merge, or fragment. That single event seems simple, but repeated billions of times it controls some of the most important multiphase flows on Earth.
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In clouds, collisions decide whether droplets remain suspended or grow into raindrops, shaping weather and climate.
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In sprays, they govern how pesticides deposit on crops, how fuel sprays burn, or how medicines are delivered.
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In advanced technologies, from 3D printing to nuclear safety, they determine whether drops wet or rebound from surfaces.
Yet despite decades of study, predicting these outcomes remains a formidable challenge, which we have only recently began to understand (see our work in this area, here). Conventional simulation tools (CFD) fail at the nanoscale where these gas and vapour films dictate the physics.
This Fellowship will:
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Develop new models that embed nanoscale effects into drop-collision dynamics.
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Create open-source simulation frameworks capable of predicting realistic collision outcomes.
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Cascade this understanding upwards, feeding collision maps into weather and spray models, in collaboration with partners including the Met Office, NCAR, and Syngenta.
Clouds provide the most familiar example, but the same science governs a wide range of systems — from fuel sprays in engines to the deposition of crop sprays and the cooling of hot surfaces in extreme environments.
Opportunities
The Fellowship will support two 3-year postdoctoral positions and PhD students at Warwick. If you’re excited by modelling, simulation, and multiphase flows — and want to work at the interface of physics, computation, and real-world applications — watch out for job adverts, or get in touch to discuss.
James Sprittles 
I’m delighted to announce that I have been awarded an EPSRC Open Fellowship to lead a new programme on drop collisions and their collective behaviour, spanning scales from nanometres to kilometres. Associated with this are two new Research Fellow Positions – details here.
When two tiny drops approach each other, a nanometre-thin layer of gas or vapour is trapped between them. Whether this film collapses or not decides the outcome: the drops may bounce, merge, or fragment. That single event seems simple, but repeated billions of times it controls some of the most important multiphase flows on Earth.
In clouds, collisions decide whether droplets remain suspended or grow into raindrops, shaping weather and climate.
In sprays, they govern how pesticides deposit on crops, how fuel sprays burn, or how medicines are delivered.
In advanced technologies, from 3D printing to nuclear safety, they determine whether drops wet or rebound from surfaces.
Yet despite decades of study, predicting these outcomes remains a formidable challenge, which we have only recently began to understand (see our work in this area, here). Conventional simulation tools (CFD) fail at the nanoscale where these gas and vapour films dictate the physics.
This Fellowship will:
Develop new models that embed nanoscale effects into drop-collision dynamics.
Create open-source simulation frameworks capable of predicting realistic collision outcomes.
Cascade this understanding upwards, feeding collision maps into weather and spray models, in collaboration with partners including the Met Office, NCAR, and Syngenta.
Clouds provide the most familiar example, but the same science governs a wide range of systems — from fuel sprays in engines to the deposition of crop sprays and the cooling of hot surfaces in extreme environments.
Opportunities
The Fellowship will support two 3-year postdoctoral positions and PhD students at Warwick. If you’re excited by modelling, simulation, and multiphase flows — and want to work at the interface of physics, computation, and real-world applications — watch out for job adverts, or get in touch to discuss.
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