Lancaster University has recently received a substantial 5-year research grant (in the form of a Senior Fellowship) of around £2.5m, jointly funded from the Digital Economy (DE) and Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) programmes. This will fund a cross-disciplinary research programme investigating the role of digital technology in understanding, mitigating and adapting to environmental change. The research focuses specifically on three complementary areas of digital technology, namely the Internet of Things, cloud computing and data science, all areas with the potential to transform our understanding of the natural environment.
As part of our commitment to this programme of research, the university is funding a 3.5 year PhD studentship in an associated area to be hosted in the School of Computing and Communications but there is the potential for collaboration with Lancaster Environment Centre or the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology depending on topic. The studentship covers an annual tax-free stipend of £14,057 (with annual increments), tuition fees at home/EU level (currently £4,052) and access to a training grant (£800 p.a.).
We are looking for a strongly motivated an ambitious PhD student to join and support this initiative. Potential areas include, but are not limited to:
- The role of Internet of Things technology in providing real-time streamed data associated with the natural environment;
- The role of cloud computing in supporting a new kind of open, integrative and collaborative science;
- The role of cloud computing for the execution of complex environmental models;
- The role of data science in making sense of complex and heterogeneous environmental data;
- The management of the underlying complexity of distributed systems, including middleware principles and techniques to raise the level of abstraction of underlying technological infrastructure;
- Management of complexity in environmental ecosystems, including insights from systems of systems thinking;
- Reasoning about uncertainty, including support for decision making in an uncertain world;
- Issues of privacy and/ or security around environmental data;
- Human and/or societal issues around digital technology and living with environmental change.
We are also open to cross-disciplinary research pertinent to this area.
Potential candidates are strongly encouraged to contact Professor Gordon Blair to discuss potential PhD topics and to learn more about this research initiative and this associated opportunity– email g.blair@lancaster.ac.uk (tel: 
01524 510303).
How to apply:
Please apply online via Lancaster University Postgraduate Admissions Portal. Once you have created an account you will be able to fill in your personal details, background and upload supporting documentation.
For the research proposal, please submit a statement of around 1,000 words that covers: i) why you would like to join this initiative, ii) what specifically you would like to do (including potential research questions), and iii) why this is important, novel and timely.
