Join the Wits OC Lab

The challenges we tackle are ambitious and open-ended. We are actively seeking intellectually adventurous and self-motivated postgraduate students to join us in exploring the frontiers of optical communication and computation.

Our lab is built on a culture of creative freedom, rigorous inquiry, and mutual support. A Wits postgraduate degree is a pure research experience; you will not be attending lectures but rather creating new knowledge from day one. We look for candidates who are not afraid to ask "Why?" and "What if?", who are willing to take intellectual risks, and who are driven to build things that work.

If our research excites you, the first step is to engage with it. Read some of our recent publications (Research), think about the open questions, and formulate your own ideas. Then, send a thoughtful email to Mitchell.Cox@wits.ac.za or Ling.Cheng@wits.ac.za to begin the conversation.

Administrative information on the MSc and PhD programmes can be found on the School's postgraduate admissions page.

Funding Opportunities

This section isn't comprehensive, but a good first port of call...

For MSc and PhD studies, a good first option is to apply for an NRF freestanding scholarship which is open to both South African and international students. Deadlines are around mid-year and it is competitive so you will need to dedicate some time to a winning application. For more information, please see the NRF web site, which has all the information you will need. If you are interested in applying, please let us know so that we can assist you.

In addition to general funding we may have (which you need to ask us about), we tend to have some funding available for specific projects, should you not succeed at winning an NRF scholarship. We are happy to discuss this with prospective students and post-docs. We may advertise specific positions below, but please reach out to us as we don't always list everything on this page.