Vacancies
Expressions of interest are opened for two PhDs projects
Subjects for Curtin 3rd year / Honours students
Possible subjects are displayed below when available but, if you have any other idea that you think might involve satellite remote sensing, please feel free to come and discuss it. We can design a project that suits your interests.
Net Community Production in the Eastern Indian Ocean
Supervisor: Charlotte Robinson
In May-June 2019, the RSSRG participated to a 1-month research voyage on R/V Investigator (see links below), exploring waters of the Eastern Indian Ocean (EIO) off WA, from 40°S to 10S along the 110°E longitude. One objective of the expedition was to study the biological carbon pump at the base of the food chain by measuring the marine microbial primary productivity using radiocarbon isotopes (14C) and net community production with a state-of-the-art equilibrator mass-inlet spectrometer system (EIMS) that measures dissolved oxygen-argon ratios. These measurements, combined with ancillary measurements of temperature, salinity, available light, physical mixing and phytoplankton characteristics such as community composition, size, carbon content and pigmentation will contribute to a mechanistic understanding of carbon export production in the oligotrophic Eastern Indian Ocean. Working with Dr Charlotte Robinson, the student will learn to quality control oceanographic data, compute net community production using the EIMs data and other physical and chemical oceanographic data and contribute to a journal publication on the biological pump and carbon export potential of marine microbes in the Eastern Indian Ocean. Interested students should be comfortable with working in and processing data in Matlab, Python or R.
Options to get research funded in Australia for interested scientists:
Appropriately qualified researchers can apply to a number of competitive funding schemes for individual fellowships, as proposed by Australian funding agencies, such as (non exhaustively):