Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA)

8 Fully Funded Prize PhD Studentships

The alliance brings together internationally leading physics research across Scotland to form the largest physics grouping in the UK. Major research themes being pursued are astronomy, condensed matter and materials physics, nuclear and plasma physics, elementary particles, photonics and physics and life sciences.

The Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) is offering up to 8 fully funded PhD studentships for outstanding students from anywhere in the world. These prestigious and competitive awards are intended to attract outstanding students to study for a PhD in Scotland. Applicants will be registered for a PhD in physics at one of the participating Universities namely Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt, Glasgow, Paisley, St Andrews and Strathclyde. An excellent training environment will be provided by the SUPA Graduate School, giving candidates access to a wide range of courses across Scotland.

The online SUPA Prize Studentship is looking to recruit the best early stage researchers from a world-wide market to come to Scotland and help drive the research agenda in physics. The competition has run three times very successfully. In the first year of operation, the Prize Studentship Competition had 127 applications from 34 countries. 10 studentships were awarded. The second year of operation, the Prize Studentship Competition saw an increase in applications and countries represented with 186 applications from 50 countries. 9 students were awarded the prize studentships. In our third year we had 230 applications again from around 50 countries and we awarded 15 studentships.

The SUPA Graduate School has 7 state of the art video-enable teaching rooms in each of the 6 SUPA partner physics departments and in the University of Dundee. All SUPA students have access to a comprehensive selection of advanced courses being delivered across the country by SUPA partners pooling expertise in the main theme areas of SUPA viz nuclear and plasma physics, photonics, condensed matter and material physics, astro and space, particle physics and physics and life sciences. In 2006-07, the first year of operation, we offered a total of 611 lecture hours across a choice of 48 graduate courses and 4 distance learning courses. Three Learning Technologists support video-enabled teaching and develop e-learning materials for the Graduate School. Students and staff within SUPA have access to My.SUPA - a customised learning portal to enhance and support teaching, learning, communication and collaboration within the alliance.

For more information on SUPA goto www.supa.ac.uk.

The prize studentships will be open for applications from Oct 2007, with a deadline for submission of 31 January 2008. For more information on the studentships goto www.supa.ac.uk/SUPA_F/Graduate_School/Prize_Studentships.htm