Appendix 9: CCFS postgraduate opportunities

CCFS has a flourishing postgraduate research environment with postgraduate students from many countries (currently including France, Germany, China, Russia, USA, Canada and Australia). Scholarships funding tuition fees and a living allowance are available for students with an excellent academic record or equivalent experience. 

These include:

• Australian Postgraduate Awards (APA): available for Commonwealth citizens to cover tuition fees and living allowance, with a closing date in late October annually at all universities.
   
• Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (MQRES) scholarships: available for Australian citizens and international students who wish to undertake a postgraduate program in a Centre of Excellence at Macquarie University (e.g. CCFS/GEMOC). These include cotutelle programs with international universities (http://www.international.mq.edu.au/research/cotutelles)
   
• International Postgraduate Research Scholarships (E-IPRS Endeavour Scholarships): available to overseas students to cover tuition fees with a closing date in late August annually (http://www.innovation.gov.au/InternationalEducation/EndeavourAwards/Pages/default.aspx).
   
• Macquarie University also provides research funding through a competitive internal scheme; CCFS and externally funded projects provide further resources to support postgraduate research projects; and some CCFS support is available for approved postgraduate research support.

Postgraduate projects are tailored to your expertise and interests within the framework of CCFS research goals. CCFS carries out interdisciplinary research across the boundaries of petrology, geochemistry, tectonics, metallogenesis, geodynamics and geophysics to explore the nature and evolution of the Earth and global geodynamics. Current funded projects are based in Australia, Antarctica, Canada, China, Taiwan, Italy, France, Spain, Siberia, Norway, North America, South America, Africa, Kerguelen Islands, Greenland and other locations globally (see the map here).

CCFS postgraduate programs have opportunities through access to our outstanding analytical facilities (see Technology Development section) with currently unique technologies and instrumentation configurations to tackle exciting large-scale problems in the Geosciences.

Examples of broad PhD project areas include (but are not limited to):

• Lithosphere structure and geochemistry: mantle provinciality and tectonism

• Granitoid and mineralised provinces along western Pacific convergent margins

• Fluid-vapour transfer of elements in the crust and mantle

• Heat production and evolution of the crust: crust-mantle interaction

• Geophysical applications to lithosphere studies

• Isotopic and trace element geochemistry: mantle and crustal systems

• Metal isotopes: applications to ore formation

• Magma genesis and crustal evolution: includes trace elements of accessory minerals, isotopic fingerprints

• High-pressure experimental studies

Initial enquiries can be sent to:  ccfs.admin@mq.edu.au;  or to any CCFS staff.