National Lab Doctoral Programme
Get to know the first cohort of CoSTAR National Lab's PhD students
In early October 2025 we welcomed our first cohort of talented CoSTAR National Lab PhD students, to be based across our project partner universities. Charlie Campbell, Hannah Clawson, and Michael Riordan will be based at Royal Holloway, University of London; Arthur Compindubus and Adam Hughes at Abertay University in Dundee; and Arkaprabha Basu and Rishabh Jha at the University of Surrey’s Institute for People-Centred AI.
They will be following PhD topic areas closely aligned with the wider CoSTAR National Lab research programmes called ‘Futures’. During their studies they will be addressing key strategic challenges set for us by industry, and will be building strong research connections across these Futures:
Creative Futures takes the best of sector creativity to enable the application of emergent technologies to current and futures opportunities in screen and performance, allowing storytelling to reach into the world and help shape our understanding of it.
Business Futures focuses on developing our understanding of ‘life-centric’ experiences for customers, adapted to their ever-changing needs and priorities, and allowing customers to co-create value and personalised services.
AI Futures will embed cutting-edge and foundational AI into creative industry pipelines, helping to transform the creation, production, delivery, and personalised experience of media content, providing more intuitive and creative control.
Createch Futures is seeking rich, distributed and connected interactive virtual environments, advance real-time rendering and simulation in virtual production and associated realtime workflows, optimisation and Generative AI.
User Futures applies the understanding of human factors, human cognition, emotion and user preferences to the creation of inclusive, accessible, intuitive and engaging technologies and experiences of lasting value.
Inclusive Futures explores principles of inclusive innovation and social justice in creative technology for marginalised users, seeking universal accessibility through distributed, democratised, and sustainable advanced production tools and methods.
We'll be following the progress of these talented PhD students as they progress through their studies at CoSTAR, and in the meantime, you can find out more about their extensive experience, interests and accomplishments below.
Business innovation for creative technologies
Charlie has an academic background in economics and digital media and is excited to bring this together with his professional experience from the creative industries including overseeing the digital teams for live entertainment TV productions in Los Angeles and the UK on shows such as Big Brother and Britain's Got Talent. He'll be looking at new and evolving business models in online gaming platforms and will be using his time to develop value chains to support creators, developers and producers in order to reach audiences at scale.
The impact of multisensory elements on live events and experiences
Hannah is based at Royal Holloway University and is part of the User Futures group, supervised by Dr. Andy Woods and Prof. Polly Dalton. Her PhD focuses on multisensory experiences and perception in immersive environments for performance.
She is a researcher at BBC Research and Development with extensive experience working across TV production and R&D for TV and radio, with a strong academic background in psychology. Accessibility and reach are a priority in any work she does. Hannah has worked on projects such as next generation audio for audiences with hearing impairments, evaluating public service media using human values metrics and co-design community-led deliberation investigating the future of journalism. She will use her expertise in user research and experimental psychology to create and evaluate new and engaging immersive experiences.
Reconfigurability of a flexible next-generation-audio-equipped Virtual Production studio
Michael is a composer, sound designer and guitarist with a particular interest in interactive and spatial audio. He is a graduate of the Masters in Music and Media Technologies programme at Trinity College Dublin, where his thesis examined virtual reality as an environment for sound synthesis. His work has ranged from concert pieces, often with live electronics, to video game soundtracks to VR installations. His recent collaboration with visual artist AlanJames Burns, ‘Augmented Body, Altered Mind’, has been exhibited in Ireland, Hungary and the UK, and used audience members’ brainwaves to alter a soundscape and dialogue in real-time.
Michael's PhD will examine the role of spatial audio within the virtual production studio, focusing on its perceptual impact on performers and audiences.
Creating and refining immersive, adaptive audio tools to enable real-time interaction with music and sound in Virtual Production
Arthur is a sound designer and AV technician working across theatre, film, and interactive media, with experience in international festivals, touring productions, and immersive installations. His practice combines creative sound design with technical innovation, from deploying immersive audio systems for Broadway Asia and NewYorkRep to presenting VR installations at different film festivals. He has also contributed to numerous collaborative game projects, developing adaptive and interactive sound systems for better player experiences. Arthur holds an MSc in Sound Design from the University of Edinburgh and a BA (Hons) in Game Design and Production Management from Abertay University, focusing on real-time audio and interactive systems.
His PhD is part of the Createch Future and focuses on creating and refining immersive, adaptive audio tools that enable real-time interaction with music and sound in Virtual Production environments. He will be creating tools that let artists, performers, and technicians work with sound as naturally as playing an instrument, bringing a sense of immediacy and emotion to digital production and helping connect live performance, film, and interactive media in new ways.
Neural rendering
Adam studied computer game technology at Abertay and theoretical physics at Glasgow University and is going to be diving into Adam commands an interdisciplinary skillset spanning applied mathematics and emergent technologies, forming expertise in real-time computer graphics. He originally studied BSc (Hons) Computer Games Technology at Abertay University, whilst serving two years as president of the acclaimed Abertay Game Development Society. Prior to his honours year, he took a break to intern for a software company specialising in scale VR visualisation for the aerospace, manufacturing and digital-twin sectors. Afterwards, he earned a DipHE in Theoretical Physics (advanced entry) at the University of Glasgow and has returned to Abertay University to pursue his CoSTAR PhD in Neural Rendering.
His doctoral research will focus on simulating volumetric phenomena such as clouds, dust and smoke to a hyper-realistic, real-time standard for Createch and AI Futures applications. In addition, he is exploring the physical richness of modern real-time computer graphics, building upon insights from his undergraduate research to achieve movie-like visual quality. Having followed an unconventional route, Adam is excited to have the opportunity to work in this new, fast-developing field, leveraging his unique skillset with the networking and collaboration available at the CoSTAR National Lab.
Novel interfaces for video generation through intuitive storyboarding using Sketch
Arkaprabha is based at the University of Surrey under supervision of Prof. Yi-Zhe Song. He has an M.Tech in Computer Science from the University of Hyderabad, an M.Sc from Pondicherry University and a B.Sc from Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (Calcutta University). He has also worked as a Project Associate at TCG Crest, Kolkata, and Lead Data Scientist at HappyMonk.AI, where he developed multimodal medical solutions and real-time computer vision systems for surveillance and re-identification tasks and with the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, as a project researcher, working on medical AI and heritage restoration on two Indian government projects (DST).
He has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed papers in international venues such as IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (TAI), IEEE Access, ICPR 2024, AAAI 2025 (Student Abstract), and IJCNN 2025, with works focusing on medical imaging, multimodal learning, prompt-based report generation, and alignment issues in LLMs. He is currently working on “Novel Interfaces for Video Generation Through Intuitive Storyboarding Using Sketch,” at CoSTAR, researching how abstract sketch strokes can be used to drive video generation so creators can quickly turn simple storyboards into coherent, view-aware video sequences.
Neural rendering of human performances
Rishabh is joining the programme having completed a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Surrey’s Institute for People-Centred AI. His master’s research was a turning point, where he was introduced to the field of neural rendering, which inspired him to continue his academic journey through doctoral research. He previously completed his undergraduate degree in Data Analytics from MIT Art, Design & Technology University, Pune, India, and gained professional experience working in various data analyst roles.
As part of the CoSTAR National Lab Doctoral Programme, Rishabh’s PhD research focuses on neural rendering and shadow estimation in the context of digital humans. His work aims to enhance realism and efficiency in performance capture and virtual production, contributing to the development of AI-driven workflows within the Createch Futures research theme. He is committed to making next-generation production tools available to all through accessible and intelligent technologies.