CSIRO Collections PhD scholarships now available

4 August 2017

CSIRO is the custodian of a number of collections of animal and plant specimens that contribute to national and international biological knowledge.

CSIRO’s collections are vast storehouses of information about Australia’s biodiversity.

These world-class repositories provide base-line data against which modern observations can be compared making them essential for taxonomic, genetic, agricultural and ecological research, and conservation and resource management.

Starting in 2018, National Research Collections Australia (NCRA) have several Canberra-based (with an ANU co-supervisor) PhD top-up scholarships available:

A molecular view of Australian biodiversity: use CSIRO’s collection resources in combination with DNA barcodes, Whole Genome Shotgun sequences and 600 recently sequenced transcriptomes to build the tree of life for selected Australian insect groups, exploring genomes for functional genes within this evolutionary context.
Insect Molecular Evolution: study the link between diversification and molecular evolution rate in wasps, bees and ants (Hymenoptera) with the use of newly generated and existing Ultra Conserved Element (UCE) and transcriptome datasets.
Evolution of mating systems in weeds: explore and model the evolutionary dynamics of breeding systems in Australian weed species and determine the implications for spread, persistence and control.

About the CSIRO Postgraduate Scholarship Program

2018 start
$7,000pa top-up stipend and $10,000pa operating

The CSIRO Postgraduate Scholarship Program provides opportunities in science and engineering for outstanding graduates at Australian tertiary institutions.

Each year, the Program supports postgraduate scholarships for students to work on a project relevant to one of several priority research areas. Students are co-supervised by researchers in an Australian university and CSIRO.

Top-up PhD Scholarships are available to PhD students who have gained (or expect to gain), first class honours or equivalent in relevant research areas. Students must currently be, or be able to be, enrolled in a PhD program at ANU and will need to be awarded a main source of funding (a full scholarship), ie. in addition to applying for the CSIRO scholarship (via CSIRO’s careers portal), at the same time (or before) they will also need to apply via the ANU online system and be successful in receiving either an: