In September 2017, the NERC Centre for Doctoral Training in Freshwater Biosciences and Sustainability (FRESH CDT) was awarded (£2M) to the GW4 Water Security Alliance, together with its partners BGS and CEH. The FRESH CDT is now starting up, with the most important task to recruit students for the first cohort, coming in in October 2018.
The FRESH CDT will deliver 12 studentships will be available in the first round, including 3 for Bath. We will start advertising projects on 1 January 2018.
Our proposal considered the full process of co-designing and co-creating the PhDs with you our stakeholder community, via a series of engagement workshops. However, timing is against us for the Oct 2018 cohort intake as other institutions are already advertising potential projects. While PhD studentships will only commence in October 2018, we hope to start advertising potential projects by the end of year.
We are looking for projects in four themes:
- Quantify and manage emerging risks to freshwaters that stem from changing patterns in behaviours, demography, governance or climate
- Develop and test next generation tools for assessing and monitoring ecosystems and ecosystem services
- Tackle extinction and impairment in freshwater ecosystems
- Create integrated solutions to manage ecosystem service sustainability for people and ecosystems
We think this CDT and its research opportunities are of interest to many organisations and companies in the water field. We would be very much interested to engage with you on research in the abovementioned areas.
- We would be grateful if you could please suggest one or several research challenge questions (maximum 5-10 lines) that you consider relevant to your organisation. All will be circulated to our community of more than 200 water researchers and we will facilitate them in getting back to you to start refining any potential research project.
- Could you also please provide any potential co-supervisors from your organisation and/or the most appropriate contact for us to liaise with.
All projects will have to be submitted for approval to the FRESH CDT panel before the 1st January 2018.
For more information, contact Jan Hofman or the FRESH team in Cardiff.
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