PhD Studentship in Engineering/Environment at University of Louvain in Belgium, 2015

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National Science Foundation of Belgium (FNRS) is offering PhD Studentship in Engineering/Environment at University of Louvain. The candidate must hold a Master degree whose training focuses on engineering/bioengineering/physics/geosciences. Aptitude for teamwork, good spoken and written English will be appreciated. The application deadline is September 15th, 2015.

Study Subject(s): Position is awarded in the field of soil science/ physic/ modeling.
Course Level: Position is available for pursing PhD programme at University of Louvain.
Scholarship Provider: National Science Foundation of Belgium (FNRS)
Scholarship can be taken at: Belgium

Eligibility: The candidate must hold a Master degree whose training focuses on engineering/bioengineering/physics/geosciences. Aptitude for teamwork, good spoken and written English will be appreciated.

Scholarship Open for International Students: Citizens from Belgium can apply for this PhD position.

Scholarship Description: Geophysical techniques, such as electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), are more and more used as a tool to assess spatio-temporal soil moisture dynamics of cropped soils. Yet, the variability in space and time of the pedophysical relationship remains an important challenge, especially in the presence of growing roots. In most studies, an effect of root biomass on bulk EC is observed, but not yet well understood and thus this effect is not compensated for the estimation of soil moisture content. It has been shown that bulk electrical resistivity from ERT is correlated with root density or root length density. However, the electrical properties of root segments, the effect of the full root architecture and the combination with heterogeneous porous media have not been fully addressed. This PhD aims at developing a multi-scale model to represent the electrical processes taking place in the soil-plant continuum under an external electric field. At the microscopic scale a novel model that considers polarization from soil over rhizosphere to root tissue, as well as the polarization processes along and around roots, need to be developed. The effect of different root system characteristics on these properties will be addressed. Based on an electrical model for individual root segments, electrical parameterizations of complete, growing root architectures will be developed. Existing root growth and soil water models will have to be combined with the electrical models, allowing the prediction and study of effective soil-root electrical properties as well as the calibration of corresponding biopedophysical relationships. Besides the modelling efforts, the PhD candidate will assist in the execution of experiments on root segments and individual plants with varying root architectures.

Number of award(s): One Award

Duration of award(s): Position is awarded for the duration of four years.

How to Apply: Candidates must send a detailed CV and a motivation letter to Mathieu Javaux (Mathieu.javaux-at-uclouvain.be).

Scholarship Application Deadline: The application deadline is September 15th, 2015.

Further Official Scholarship Information and Application

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