1. Elemental and isotopic fractionation of chalcophile elements in the lithosphere

(Macquarie University | Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences | Sydney | Australia)

Supervisor：Prof S Foley/Prof O Alard
Application Deadline：Saturday, June 20, 2020
Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
About This PhD Project

Project Description
This project entails an analytical and experimental investigation of elemental and isotopic fractionation of chalcophile elements between minerals (sulfides and silicates) and melts and how they relate to volatile elements. The project includes the development of new analytical techniques based on laser ablation coupled with state of the art inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers (i.e. tandem MS/MS-ICP-MS and MC-ICP-MS). It will be supported by experiments that investigate melting of rocks under lithospheric conditions.

Our Department has a newly expanded high-pressure experimental laboratory and a strong tradition in microbeam mineral and rock analysis (EMPA, SEM, Laser-ICP-MS). We emphasize cross-links between geochemistry, petrology and geophysics in mantle and lithosphere studies. We seek outstanding students to actively contribute to a team effort in the Australian Laureate project “Deep Earth Cycles of Carbon, Water and Nitrogen” (https://bit.ly/2Z6zZ4U).
Direct entry into the PhD programme at Macquarie requires completion of a two-year Masters degree with a major research component at Distinction level (75%). For applicants with an Honours or shorter Masters degree, there are also MRES/PhD package scholarships which enable completion of MRES as a training pathway to a Doctoral degree.
International scholarships include living stipend and fees for 3 years. Applications are now open: application deadline is July 31st.
https://www.mq.edu.au/research/phd-and-research-degrees/how-to-apply
There is also an option for co-tutelle projects with partner universities.
You are encouraged to discuss a research proposal before completing your on-line application. Informal enquiries should be addressed to Prof. Stephen Foley (Stephen.foley@mq.edu.au) or Prof Olivier Alard (Olivier.alard@mq.edu.au). We also encourage students to suggest their own research themes. Enquiries about openings further into the future are also welcome.

Related Subjects

· Geochemistry

· Geology

2. Images of a Foreign Land. Scotland, Poland-Lithuania and the Problem of Cultural Transfer

(Aberdeen University | School of Divinity, History &Philosophy| Aberdeen| United Kingdom)

Supervisor：Prof R Frost / Prof Karin Friedrich

Application Deadline：Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

About This PhD Project

Project Description

One of the most intriguing aspects of the relationship between Poland-Lithuania and Scotland in the early modern period is the way in which the substantial migration of Scots to Poland-Lithuania affected the image of Poland-Lithuania in Scotland, and the image of Scotland in Poland-Lithuania. In the sixteenth century, both countries were influenced by similar political and cultural-religious trends. In Poland-Lithuania, this led to the constitutional revolution of 1572–6, which created a Republic based on the Aristotelian vision of the mixed form of government as the basis of the ideal political system. The citizens of this republic, the nobility of Poland-Lithuania, gained the right to elect their monarch viritim in 1573, and while the king remained an essential part of the political system, his authority was limited by the Henrician Articles, first sworn to in 1576, which required him to call the Sejm every two years, and contained a clause justifying the withdrawal of obedience should the monarch act in breach of the law. In Scotland, the influence of Renaissance republicanism and Calvinist theories of resistance, were evident in the arguments advanced to justify the forced abdication of Mary Queen of Scots in 1567, and the theory developed by George Buchanan claiming that the Scottish monarchy was elective in nature. Despite the substantial presence of Scottish migrants in Poland-Lithuania, there has been little research into the influence of Polish-Lithuanian ideas on Scotland, although Allan Macinnes has argued that the Polish institution of confederation, which gave a legal basis to collective action by the citizen body, may have influenced the 1638 National Covenant in Scotland, while Robert Frost has investigated the basis of Scottish knowledge of the Polish-Lithuanian political system. Finally, the Anglo-Scottish union and the Polish-Lithuanian union followed broadly similar paths, from a union of the crowns to a union of the parliaments; the only such parliamentary unions formed in early modern Europe. Yet while there have been several studies of general British views of Poland-Lithuania, there has been no comprehensive study of Scottish attitudes to Poles and the Polish-Lithuanian political system, or Polish attitudes towards Scots and Scottish politics. This project will chart the changing attitudes on both sides as in political and religious terms the two systems diverged in the seventeenth century. It will examine in particular the crisis years of the mid-seventeenth century, when both systems faced civil war and fundamental political upheaval, and its aftermath. It will also look at discussions of the Polish-Lithuanian union during the debates surrounding the unions of 1603 and 1707.

Funding Notes

Some of the PhD opportunities in the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy have funding attached. Applications for study are welcome from suitably qualified candidates worldwide. Funding for this particular project will only be available on a competition basis to Overseas applicants and you should please consult our website (www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/scholarships) for further details.

Related Subjects

· History

3. PhD Scholarships in Law at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa

(Curtin University | Faculty of Science and Engineering | Perth | Australia)

Supervisor：Prof A Rohl / Dr A Phatak / Prof R Loxton / Prof C Aldrich

Application Deadline：Monday, January 04, 2021

Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

About This PhD Project

Project Description

This project aims to deliver improved predictability of failure (with uncertainty estimates) for individual assets (rather than a population of assets) from longitudinal data. Remaining useful life (RUL) estimation provides a probabilistic maximum likelihood estimate of the expected time to failure. This is naturally a stochastic quantity. The aim of this project is to apply Bayesian methodologies in conjunction with other data driven modelling paradigms to optimally estimate expected failure. This will include an estimate not only of the RUL, but also the uncertainty of this estimate. Combined, these quantities can then be drawn upon for optimal maintenance scheduling and planning and for empirical expected-value based planning of asset replacement and retirement.

Funding Notes

The Scholarship Stipend is approximately $30,000 (AUD) per annum for 3 years (Full Time), with the possibility of a six-month extension.
For a successful international student, tuition fees offsets (between $25k – $45k AUD p.a.) will apply.

Related Subjects

· Data Analysis

· Information Science

· Statistics

4. PhD student in Soft Neural Interfaces

(Linköping University | Department of Science and Technology | Linkoping | Sweden)

Supervisor：Dr Klas Tybrandt

Application Deadline：Sunday, June 14, 2020

Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

About This PhD Project

Project Description

PhD student in Soft Neural Interfaces

LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY

Hereby advertises a position as PhD student in Applied Physics formally based at the Department of Science and Technology, Campus Norrköping.

Research area

The PhD student will work in the Soft Electronics group at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics (LOE). Within the Soft Electronics group we develop composite materials, design concepts and devices for soft and deformable electronic systems. Areas of special interest are bioelectronics and neural interfaces, stretchable (semi)conductors, energy harvesting/storage, and actuators. Many of our projects are based on national and international collaborations including a variety of competences. Read more at: http://www.liu.se/soft-electronics

At the Laboratory of Organic Electronics (LOE) we explore electronic and optical properties of organic semiconductors, biomaterials from the forest, and hybrid organic materials. We share a common interest in utilizing the combination of electronic and ionic charge for use in healthcare and biology applications, energy, and the internet-of-things. Our research topics include synthesis, material science, theory and modeling, device physics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and system design. Our activities span the range from basic research to commercialization, the latter carried out in close collaboration with the institute RISE. LOE currently has ~150 researchers and research students divided into eleven units, each led by a principal investigator. Read more at http://www.liu.se/loe

Duties

As a PhD student you will primarily devote yourself to your research. As a PhD student you are limited to work with education and administration up to 20 percent of full time.

The PhD student will develop a novel neural interface technology based on soft and deformable conductors and functional materials. A new concept around self-inserting neural interfaces will be explored to find novel solutions for integrating soft electronics into tissue. The research will include materials and devices based on soft and elastic electronic composite materials to facilitate close integration with neural tissue and thereby enabling the translation between biological and electronic signals. Typical composite materials comprise metallic nanomaterials and soft elastomers. The PhD studies will include processing of materials and components in a cleanroom facility, together with the characterization of electrical/mechanical material properties and device performance. The development of bio-applications will be carried out in collaboration with external partners.

Qualifications

Employment as a PhD student is dependent on admission to Linköping University graduate education program.

A suitable background for this position is a master’s or engineering degree in materials science, applied physics, electrical engineering, biotechnology, or a related field. Desirable personal skills and traits for the position are highly motivated, ambitious, problem solving skills and teamwork ability. Research at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics is carried out predominantly in English, so relative fluency is favorable.
Appointment time

Appointment will be renewed annually, with the full period of employment not exceeding the equivalent of four years’ full-time research training. The maximum time of employment, taking into account the four years’ equivalent, cannot exceed eight years.

Starting date

Autumn 2020 by agreement

Salary

The salary for PhD students is based on the department’s salary scale.

Application procedure

Apply for the position at https://liu.se/en/work-at-liu/vacancies?rmpage=job&rmjob=13821&rmlang=UK. Your application must be received at latest 2020-06-14. Applications and documents received after the date above will not be considered.

Contact persons

Dr. Klas Tybrandt, Senior lecturer and unit manager, klas.tybrandt@liu.se, +46736617736

Annelie Westerberg, HR partner, HR@itn.liu.se, +4611363450

Related Subjects

· Applied Physics

· Biomedical Engineering

· Materials Science

· Nanotechnology

5. Full waveform seismic processing for mineral exploration

(Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal | Department of Civil, Geological and Mining Engineering | Montreal | Canada)

Supervisor：Prof Gabriel Fabien-Ouellet

Application Deadline：Wednesday, July 01, 2020

Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

About This PhD Project

Project Description

The search for very deep deposits is becoming more and more important in mineral exploration. Due to the absence of surface indicators and the prohibitive cost of deep drilling, indirect methods, such as geophysical surveys, are essential in such context. For deep targets (300 to 2000m), reflection seismic is the geophysical technique having the best compromise between resolution and depth of investigation. Seismic methods remain, however, underutilized in mineral exploration. The main reason is the poor performance of traditional seismic imagery algorithms for metamorphosed and highly folded geological environments. Modern processing algorithms, namely Reverse Time Migration (RTM) and Full Waveform Inversion (FWI), can theoretically image any kinds of structures, regardless of their complexity, dips or material variability. This capability comes from adopting the most complete physical model of wave propagation, or the full-wave equation. To date, RTM and FWI have not been fully developed or tested for mining seismic applications.
The successful candidate will work on the development of FWI and RTM algorithms optimized for mining seismic. Applying full waveform processing in the context of mineral exploration remains a major scientific and technical challenge. Indeed, land seismic data are complex and contain several seismic phases. This complexity requires a complete physical models of wave propagation. One of the main objectives of the research projects will be the development of the viscoelastic formulation of FWI and RTM, which is better adapted to land data than the usual acoustic approximation. Such a formulation has the added advantage of allowing the estimation of the geomechanical properties of rocks. However, convergence of viscoelastic FWI remains problematic. Another principal objective of the research projects will be to regularize FWI in the context of mineral exploration. This will be achieved by the integration of drilling information and petrophysical relationships as constrains to the inversion. FWI will generate high resolution models of the geomechanical properties or rocks and RTM will provide better resolved seismic images. A final objective of the research projects is to fully integrates those high-resolution models within an interpretation workflow adapted to the context of mineral exploration.
The research projects will be conducted in collaboration with key industrial partners. The Geophysics group at Polytechnique Montreal has a solid expertise with seismic inversion and high-performance computing. The successful candidates will work directly with the Mineral Exploration Research Center (MERC) and the mining company Canadian Royalties. The MERC provides high-resolution FWI-optimized seismic lines acquired for the Metal Earth project. The objective of these surveys is to improve our understanding of the formation of VMS deposits in the Green Rocks belt of Abitibi (Canada). For the past two years, Canadian Royalties have been acquiring high-resolution seismic lines for the exploration of Ni-CU-PGE type deposits in the Cape Smith belt (northern Quebec, Canada). These partnerships will allow us to test the new inversion and imaging algorithms as well as improve our scientific understanding of key geologic formations in Northern Quebec.

Funding Notes

Financial support
Competitive financial support is offered for the duration of the projects.
Qualifications
Applicants should have a completed or nearly complete first-class honours degree or a Master degree in Geophysics, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Earth sciences or related majors. The candidates should have a working knowledge of a programming language.

Related Subjects

· Data Analysis

· Geophysics