Digital Twins for Emergency Medicine

University of Warwick – School of Engineering Scholarship

Qualification: Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering (PhD)

Eligibility: UK Students, EU Students, International Students

Award value: Home fees and tax-free stipend - See advert for details

Deadline: 31 July 2026

Digital Twins for Emergency Medicine

An opportunity exists to join the world-leading Interdisciplinary Collaboration in System Medicine (ICSM) Research Group to work on an industrially funded PhD project that will develop digital twins to investigate next-generation ventilation technologies for emergency medicine scenarios.

Project Detail
In collaboration with the industrial partner Weinmann Emergency Medical Technology GmbH, this project will develop cohorts of digital twins [1] for use in developing, validating, and testing next-generation ventilator technologies for emergency medicine scenarios. Digital twins will be created of intubated patients receiving pressure controlled mechanical ventilation [2], spontaneously breathing patients receiving non-invasive ventilation delivered via a facemask [3], and patients receiving CPR after Cardiac Arrest [4]. Digital twins will be developed as fully configurable Matlab code, with a well-defined user interface, and will run faster than real-time. The digital twins will be used to investigate a number of open research questions, including (a) the potential for developing and validating closed-loop ventilation control modes, (b) whether patient data gathered in the field could allow the digital twins to identify patient characteristics that are relevant for therapy, (c) computational optimisation of current CPR protocols.

Key References:
[1] S. Saffaran, H. Yu, H. Shamohammadi, L. Weaver, W. Joy, L. Ketteridge, B. Albanese, L. Regulski, S. Becker, D. Sharkey, T.C. Kwok, J.G. Hardman, N. Yehya, T. Mauri, T.E. Scott, R. Tonelli, E. Clini, J.G. Laffey, L. Camporota, and D.G. Bates, "Computational Tools for Personalizing Treatment of Acute Respiratory Failure, from Machine Learning to Digital Twins: A Narrative Review", Critical Care, 2026.
[2] W. Joy, B. Albanese, D. Oakley, S. Mistry, Kateryna Nikulina, Andreas Schuppert, Gernot Marx, B. Brook, J.G. Hardman, J.G. Laffey, L. Rose, L. Camporota, T.E. Scott, D.G. Bates, and S. Saffaran, "Digital twins to evaluate the risk of ventilator induced lung injury during airway pressure release ventilation compared to pressure-controlled ventilation", Critical Care Medicine, 2025.
[3] L. Weaver, H. Shamohammadi, S. Saffaran, R. Tonelli, M. Laviola, J.G. Laffey, L. Camporota, T.E. Scott, J.G. Hardman, E.M. Clini, and D.G. Bates, "Digital twins of acute hypoxic respiratory failure patients suggest a mechanistic basis for success and failure of non-invasive ventilation", Critical Care Medicine, 10.1097, 2024.
[4] C. Daudre-Vignier, D.G. Bates, T.E. Scott, J.G. Hardman and M. Laviola, "Evaluating Current Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation using an Integrated Computational Model of the Cardiopulmonary System", Resuscitation, 2023.

For more details of our work, please see:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/eng/staff/dgb
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/eng/research/grouplist/biomedicaleng/interdisciplinarycollaborationinsystemsmedicine/

Scholarship:

The award will cover the UK tuition fee level, plus a tax-free stipend, currently £21,805, paidat the prevailing UKRI ratefor 3.5 years of full-time study. International candidates are welcome to apply, but must be able to cover the difference in the fee levels.

Eligibility:

The candidate should have a good 2.1 Bachelors, or Masters degree in Engineering, Computational or Physical Sciences, or Physiology/Medical Sciences. This project will suit those with a keen interest in mathematical/computational modelling and simulation applied to real-world medical challenges.

How to apply:

Candidates should submit an expression of interest by sending a CV and supporting statement outlining their skills and interests in this research area to https://www.warwick.ac.uk/engineeringscholarships/dgb/app. If this initial application is successful, we will invite you to submit a formal application.

Candidates must fulfil the University of Warwick entry criteria and obtain an unconditional offer before commencing enrolment.

Should your application for admission be accepted, you should be aware that notification of acceptance for the PhD does not constitute an offer of financial support. Successful scholarship candidates will receive an official communication from the School of Engineering to confirm their award.