[Academic] PG studentships

[Robert Martin]

Dear All,

Hopefully all of you are working to try and generate projects, funding 
and candidates for PhD studentships. We are aiming to increase our 
intake this year (with a target for Physics+IoP of 35). We achieved 30+ 
on a couple of occasions a few years ago but the intake for AY2013/14 is 
likely to stay in the mid-20s.

Unfortunately, as many of you know, the funding landscape for PhD 
studentships is becoming more difficult. In that vein I regret that we 
won't be running the tranche studentship competition as in recent years, 
as our 5 or 6 tranche 1&2 studentships are all committed. The number we 
received has reduced due to the Department's EPSRC grant portfolio 
relative to others but we are also victims of our own success in that we 
have recruited strongly in recent years and I see it as essential to 
support the new appointments with a PhD studentship. As these new 
appointments, together with existing staff, win new grants from EPSRC 
our allocation of DTG funds should increase.

It is very important that as many of us as possible bring in additional 
sources of PhD funding. If you are able to raise a significant (>0.5, 
maybe more!) fraction of a studentship we will do our very best to use 
Dept. funding alongside group and Faculty contributions to complete the 
studentship. The better news is that we've tracked down some additional 
money for this and there are a number of newer opportunities, or 
existing ones to flag:

1. We're expecting Tranche 3 competition to run as before and have been 
very successful here recently (3 awards last year) - success requires a 
high quality student.
2. The Fraunhofer Centre is looking to partner on studentship projects 
relevant to their remit - the agreement with Fraunhofer is attached.
3. We are partners in the EngD Photonics led from Heriot-Watt: see 
http://www.idcphotonics.hw.ac.uk/
4. There are two possible nascent CDTs that are being worked on, one in 
Plasma Accelerators and one in combination with the International Max 
Planck Partnership.
5. Organisations like DSTL, ELI, NPL, etc. are indicating possibilities 
for studentship funding

I need to ask you all to work on whatever opportunities are relevant to 
your area. Please look at the adverts you have on "findaPhD.com" and 
freshen up if necessary or put one up if not already done so. The 
Department will pay for one per academic. The studentship funding 
doesn't have to be in place to do this but it may well generate 
candidates for the T3 competition or other opportunities.

Regards,

Rob

===============================================================
Professor Robert Martin,
Head of Department,
Department of Physics, University of Strathclyde, John Anderson 
Building, Glasgow, UK, G4 0NG

tel: 0141-548-3132 (secretary) / 3466 (direct)
fax: 0141-552-2891
e-mail: r.w.martin at strath.ac.uk <mailto:r.w.martin at strath.ac.uk>

The Department is a partner in SUPA, the Scottish Universities Physics 
Alliance
The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in 
Scotland, number SC015263

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