We invite applications from qualified and highly motivated students for two exciting interdisciplinary PhD studentships in Geographic Information Science and Ecology, funded through the NERC Doctoral Training Partnership IAPETUS2 .

PhD studentships will be based at the School of Geography & Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews and at the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Stirling. Projects will be co-supervised by Dr Urška Demšar (St Andrews) and Dr Thiago Silva (Stirling) with additional external supervisors.

Project 1. A time geography approach for data fusion of movement and environmental data: accounting for uncertainty of movement in resource selection models
Located at the University of St Andrews, with co-supervision from Stirling.

Project 2. New theoretical and analytical approaches for quantifying landscape dynamics and its effects on ecosystem function in the hyper-dynamic Amazon wetlands
Located at the University of Stirling, with co-supervision from St Andrews.

The studentships cover tuition fees at the UK/EU level and a yearly tax-free stipend of £14777/year for 3.5 years, plus additional funding for research and conference travel as part of the project. Note that these studentships are available for UK/EU citizens only, where EU citizens need to comply with the UKRI eligibility conditions (i.e. be ordinarily resident in UK for at least 3 years prior to application) or else they are eligible for fees only award. International (non-EU/non-UK) applicants are not eligible for these studentships and will not be considered.

The studentships will start in September 2020.

We are looking for candidates who fulfil the following requirements:

• Interest in GIScience/Ecology.
• Ability to work with and develop new methods for big spatial data.
• An excellent degree in a relevant discipline: GIScience, Geoinformatics, Remote Sensing, Ecology, Geography, Data Science.
• Preferably an MSc degree or a BSc from a 4-year programme.
• Good coding skills (preferably in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) environments: Python, R, QGIS).
• Excellent English skills for non-native speakers (note that University of St Andrews requires 6.5 to 7.5 on IELTS for admission of international PhD students).

How to apply for the St Andrews project (1):
send your CV and an expression of interest (where you explain how you meet these conditions and why you are interested in this topic) to Dr Urška Demšar at urska.demsar@st-andrews.ac.uk before Tue 17 Dec 2019. You will be contacted and invited to submit a full application according to the IAPETUS2 instructions.
Please do not submit a full application unless you have been invited to do so.

How to apply for the Stirling project (2):
contact Dr Thiago Silva at thiago.sf.silva@stir.ac.uk prior to submitting a full application.

How to submit a full application: See IAPETUS2 website for instructions.

DL for full application: Friday 10th January 2020 at 5pm (GMT)