PhD in modelling plant-environment and plant-plant interactions

Are you looking for an exciting PhD position on plant-environment and plant-plant interactions, using mechanistic models? Do you want to identify management practices that minimize negative environmental impacts and are robust to climate change? Are you highly motivated to undertake a PhD training and actively pursue an academic career?

Crop production needs to be transformed. Agriculture can be made more sustainable and resilient by relying more on ecosystem services provided by biodiversity and less on external inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. These ecosystem services depend on crop traits and climate and soil conditions. This doctoral project will employ mathematical models based on ecological and physiological mechanisms to look at advantages and disadvantages of different management practices for primary production, climate change adaptation, and reduced environmental impacts.

The required qualification is at least 240 higher education credits, including at least 60 credits at 2nd cycle education. The credits can be in engineering, earth and environmental sciences, physics, applied mathematics, natural sciences, or related fields. Written and oral proficiency in English is required. Interest and previous experience in developing mechanistic models coupling plants, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystems, and environmental conditions, as well as documented strong quantitative and programming skills (in C, MatLab, R, Python, or other languages for data analysis and model implementation) are merits.

Location: Uppsala, Sweden
Starting date: by agreement