GRACE Doctoral Fellow

The Graduate School for Climate and Environment (GRACE) is the Doctoral School of the KIT Climate and Environment Center. GRACE is now accepting applications for a doctoral researcher position, starting in March 2024 or later.

Since its founding in 2009, the KIT Center for Climate and Environment has offered a wide range of expertise in the natural sciences, technical and social science disciplines with around 700 scientists from 30 institutes. PhD researchers at the KIT Center for Climate and Environment develop basic and applied knowledge on climate and environmental change to develop concepts as well as nature-based and technological solutions to secure the natural basis of life and design the living space.

With the development of low-cost sensors, sensor networks, UAVs and remote sensing monitoring missions, large quantities of environmental data are acquired day by day with continuing growth. Artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches play an important role to process, classify and understand these data but also to integrate data of different sources to carry out complex environmental studies and to detect anomalies in environmental data and processes. While machine learning approaches have been predominantly developed with images and time series of environmental sensors, reflection time series from Radar or acoustic sensors are yet less considered. Sonar sub bottom profiling and echo sounders are among the later with increasing availability by autonomous operating vessels. The PhD position is offered in the field of machine learning approaches to automated interpretation and classification of reflection time series data such as sonar or others.

It is planned that the doctoral researcher will be funded for three years with a scholarship, provided through the Helmholtz program Changing Earth. The scholarship is for PhD candidates to be based at the Graduate School for Climate and Environment at KIT. Detailed information on the scholarship is available in the scholarship guidelines (see infobox at the bottom of this page).

Applicants should hold a Master’s degree in geoinformatics, geophysics, applied geosciences, computer science or other related discipline qualifying for research on this topic. In addition, applicants should have obtained their Master’s degree no more than four years ago and should not have a PhD yet.

Please submit your application by email to info∂grace.kit.edu including the following documents:

• COVERLETTER - Please explain in 1-2 pages why you would like to undertake the PhD at the Graduate School for Climate and Environment GRACE. Please also indicate any relevant experience.
• CV - Please include contact details of potential referees.
• Transcript - Please provide a scan of your relevant academic degrees and grades. Important: Please note, without a score that is equivalent of at least 80% or higher in your last research degree, you will be ineligible for the offered PhD scholarship.

Application Deadline is February 27, 2024. For further information about this doctoral fellow opportunity, please send an e-mail to info∂grace.kit.edu.