Joining the Group

I receive a very large number of enquiries every year from prospective DPhil students, postdocs, interns, visiting students and Oxford students looking for projects.

I am always interested in hearing from strong people whose interests align closely with ours, but I cannot respond in detail to, meet with, or supervise everyone who contacts me. Please read the relevant section below before getting in touch.

My main research interest over the next few years is infrastructure-guided robotics: how robots can exploit sensing, computation and intelligence embedded in the environment, and how infrastructure and robotic systems can be designed together to enable reliable and scalable autonomy.

If this is close to what you want to work on, there are several possible ways to join or work with us.

DPhil / PhD

The usual route to a PhD with me is the DPhil in Engineering Science at Oxford.

Research fit

Please think carefully about which supervisor is the best match for the research you actually want to do.

I receive many more strong applications than I could possibly take on. If another Oxford academic is more closely aligned with your interests, you are likely better off choosing them from the start rather than listing me simply because your work is broadly related to robotics.

The aim is not to discourage you from applying to Oxford: choosing a potential supervisor whose research genuinely matches yours is likely to make for a stronger application and, ultimately, a better PhD.

If you specifically want to work with me, please list me as your first-choice proposed supervisor in your application.

Funding

I do not currently have dedicated funding for overseas-fee DPhil students through my own projects.

If you require full funding, you should therefore have a realistic scholarship, studentship or external funding route in mind.

One important possibility is the Clarendon Scholarship. There is no separate Clarendon application: eligible applicants are considered when applying to Oxford by the relevant scholarship deadline. For Engineering Science this is normally the December application round.

Clarendon is extremely competitive, so please do not assume that applying will result in funding.

Please always check the official Oxford admissions pages for the deadlines and funding rules for your application year.

CDT routes

You should also consider Oxford’s doctoral training programmes, particularly:

  • AIMS — Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems
  • FoAI — Fundamentals of AI
  • RAINZ — Robotics and AI for Net Zero

These are separate application routes, with their own admissions processes, deadlines and funding arrangements. They can be considered in addition to a standard Engineering Science DPhil application.

Postdoctoral researchers

Funded postdoctoral positions will normally be advertised through the University.

If there is no suitable advertised position, I am particularly interested in hearing from researchers who have:

  • a strong overlap with our research;
  • a specific research direction they would like to pursue; and
  • identified a fellowship or other realistic funding route for which Oxford could be the host institution.

A generic enquiry asking whether I have any postdoctoral positions available is unlikely to be useful if no position is currently advertised.

Final-year projects (4YP)

I supervise Oxford Engineering Science and Computer Science students on fourth-year projects.

Please get in touch if you are interested in one of my closed 4YP projects, or if you would like to propose a student-initiated project closely related to our research.

For a student-initiated project, please send me a short description and, ideally, a figure or other visual explaining what you would like to investigate. You do not need to prepare a long proposal.

Summer internships

We typically host 1–2 interns over the summer.

Please check the relevant internship information from the Oxford Robotics Institute and, where the application process allows this, name Daniele De Martini as your proposed supervisor.

For Oxford undergraduates, common funding routes include EUROP and the EPSRC Vacation Internship scheme.

Students from outside the UK

Please be aware that visa, immigration and funding requirements make it very difficult for us to host summer interns who are studying outside the UK.

In particular, coming to Oxford as a visitor is not a workaround for an internship: research visits and internships are treated differently for immigration purposes.

For this reason, unless there is an appropriate funding and immigration route already in place, I am generally unable to accommodate speculative internship requests from overseas students.

Availability in all cases depends on suitable projects, supervision capacity and funding.

Visiting students

We can occasionally host MSc or PhD research students from other institutions, but visits should normally form part of an existing research collaboration or be intended to establish a meaningful collaboration between the two institutions or research groups.

A visiting-student request should therefore not be framed simply as an individual opportunity to spend some time doing research at Oxford.

A suitable visit would typically involve:

  • a clear research project of mutual interest;
  • support from your home supervisor or research group;
  • a connection to an existing collaboration, or a clear case for establishing one;
  • agreed goals and a defined duration; and
  • appropriate funding and formal arrangements for the visit.

When contacting me about a visit, please explain:

  • what you would like to work on;
  • why the project is relevant to both research groups;
  • your home institution and supervisor;
  • whether there is an existing collaboration between our groups, or how the visit could help establish one;
  • the proposed dates and duration; and
  • how the visit would be funded.

Undergraduate / BSc research visits

I am not able to host informal short research visits for BSc/undergraduate students simply as an opportunity to spend a few weeks or months doing research at Oxford.

Undergraduate study or research visits need to take place through an appropriate formal University route. Depending on the circumstances, this can involve University or college registration, immigration requirements and substantial tuition or other fees.

Therefore, if you are an undergraduate at another university looking for a short informal research placement, please do not email me to arrange this directly.

If your university has an established exchange, collaboration or visiting-student arrangement with Oxford, please use that formal route instead.

Getting in touch

If, after reading the relevant section above, you think there is a strong research match, please send me a short email.

Tell me:

  1. which route you are interested in — DPhil, postdoc, 4YP, internship or research visit;
  2. what you have worked on, and what you personally contributed;
  3. what you would like to work on with me, and why it fits our research; and
  4. where relevant, how you expect the position or visit to be funded.

Please do not send a long generic research proposal.

If you would like to discuss the research fit, you can also schedule a short conversation at:

cal.eu/danieledema

Please bring a few visuals. A couple of figures, videos, results or examples of systems you have worked on are much more useful to me than a long slide deck.

In particular, I would like to understand:

  • what you have actually built, analysed or investigated;
  • what your own contribution was; and
  • what you would be excited to work on next.

For prospective DPhil students, these conversations are informal research chats only. They are not Oxford admissions interviews, do not constitute an offer of supervision, and do not imply admission or funding.