How to apply – Water-WISER CDT

Studentships

Studentships consist of a 4-year stipend paid monthly (at EPSRC standard rates, rising each year: e.g. for the academic year 2022/2023 the stipend is £17,668 tax-free). All fees are paid. A maximum sum of £20,000 over 4 years is available for fieldwork and laboratory costs; this could increase if a sector partner is involved in co-funding the project.

International students are eligible for a full scholarship (stipend and fees paid, plus fieldwork costs) though a maximum of 3 places are available.

In addition to other applications, we have two specific projects we wish to recruit students to for this round of recruitment for the Water-WISER CDT programme:

1 – Improving management of rural water services

This project will work with the USAID REAL Water project, specifically consortium partner Aguaconsult. They are working with partners and aim to ultimately carry out the research in seven countries, namely: Ghana, Kenya, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia, with initial research activities in Ghana during 2023. The focus is on rural water supplied under three different management arrangements: community based management, private sector provision and public sector provision. The project will collect service delivery performance and other data from water supply facilities under each management model to understand performance and the influence of different management practices and how these vary across contexts. The project will involve fieldwork in several countries. This project would suit a student who has strong data analysis skills. Overall it is an excellent opportunity for a student who wants to build a network with researchers and practitioners and across multiple countries and organisations.

Study area: civil engineering, development studies, rural planning, human geography

2 – Investigating the effectiveness of ‘Drinking Water Safety Planning’ for future smart water systems

Technology is developing at a rapid pace, providing significant opportunities to improve how we live and work in the world. The development of IoT, cloud data and analytics, and machine learning/AI, have significant potential to help in the monitoring and management of drinking water and wastewater systems. Although water utilities are beginning to embrace these technologies and seeing improvements in parts of their networks, there are still big gaps in the knowledge of what to do with all this new data and improve performance. Riskoa Ltd, in collaboration with Northumbria Water Ltd, are developing a centralised information management system that is based on the WHO endorsed, and now DWI regulated, Drinking Water Safety Planning methodology, with the potential to integrate a number of technologies and sensors to provide a more centralised way of managing water system safety and performance.

Click here to find out more about the above project.

You may find the resources below useful:

Apply online

Applications are open for September 2023 entry, and will remain open until places are filled. For more information or to apply online, please click here.

For any application queries please contact the Centre Manager j.mckay@leeds.ac.uk