Current Vacancies

Fancy taking on a doctorate in the new year? 

The Advanced Water Management Centre (AWMC) is an international centre of excellence in water technology and management (http://www.awmc.uq.edu.au/). Two exciting post graduate opportunities exist within this centre for environmental, chemical, agriculture, biotechnology engineering or chemical sciences graduates.

Macro nutrients such as phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium are key elements for plant growth and are used in agriculture as fertiliser. Phosphorous and potassium in particular are mined and are non renewable. Urban, industrial and agricultural waste streams contain large amounts of these nutrients, which can be potentially recovered to sustain agricultural production long-term. While phosphorous can be recovered readily using solids precipitation, it is more difficult to recover ammonia and potassium in this way.  The PhD projects will develop novel methods to potentially recover these nutrients using ion concentration, adsorption or engineered anaerobic technologies.  The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) is funding development of a range of technologies to recover nutrients from waste streams as clean fertilizer substitute products.

The University of Queensland (UQ) is looking for highly motivated PhD candidates with an appropriate background who are eligible for an Australian Postgraduate Award and other merit based UQ scholarships.  Applicants should be an Australian permanent resident or citizen. A scholarship top-up of $5000 per annum will be offered to the base scholarship for a package range of $25,000-$30,000 tax free.

Applications are open now and interested persons are advised to contact:

Dr. Chirag Mehta, telephone 07 3346 7208 or email c.mehta@uq.edu.au. OR
Dr. Damien Batstone damienb@awmc.uq.edu.au