PhD Scholarships

PhD scholarships on: Assessing Water Supply Security in a Nonstationary Environment

A “Water Crisis” represents the largest global economic risk over a 10-year planning horizon as per a recent World Bank report. A water crisis is more likely in fragile economies, and can even increase the chance of an economy turning fragile were it to occur. Such crises will occur with greater intensity and frequency as global populations surge and flock to urban centres while reservoir inflows reduce. Reductions of inflow are even more significant in drier continents like Australia, where aridity is already on the rise.

To address this, applications are invited for the above mentioned PhD scholarship supported by a recently awarded Australian Research Council Discovery project (DP200101326). The PhD will be supervised by Drs Ashish Sharma (UNSW), Conrad Wasko (UMelbourne) and Rory Nathan (UMelbourne), an experienced team that has graduated many PhDs who are all established researchers in their own right.The PhD will be based primarily at UNSW’s Water Research Center, with opportunities for spending considerable time at UMelbourne, as well as stints overseas for conferences and training visits.

The selected candidate must be domestic (or a permanent resident of Australia) to be eligible to apply for an  Australian Postgraduate Award (APA). The selected candidate will receive a scholarship of $42,455, equivalent to a UNSW Scientia PhD scholarship. A Honours 1 or equivalent is the minimum requirement for an APA, obtained within the last 5 years. Please look through APA selection guidelines for additional details.

We are after an excellent applicant who has a flair for research, good training in hydrology, statistics and computing, and feels for the worsening water security the world faces as we head into dangerously elevated warmer conditions. Applicants must be honours 1 or equivalent to be competitive. Please contact Professor Ashish Sharma (a.sharma@unsw.edu.au) with a subject heading “ARC Water Supply PhD scholarship” with a CV and summarised transcripts. For those undecided whether they should or should not apply, please do read the stories of now graduated PhDs from the group at http://www.hydrology.unsw.edu.au/. While there is no firm date by which the student needs to start, please submit your CV and transcripts by the 1st of June 2020 to the email address above. This is to ensure the student can apply for an APA scholarship in time to allow commencing later this year.

NOTE: This submission deadline on this scholarship has been increased (from May 1 to June 1 2020) to allow for new applications, given the need to find the correct student to undertake this PhD. Please contact Ashish Sharma for any questions you might have on the project and what all it entails.