July 8-12, 2024
Applications Closed
Climate change has altered the water cycle from local to global scales, leading to more frequent extreme hydrometeorological hazards that affect environment, ecosystems, and socio-economic activities worldwide.
During the first two decades of the 21st century, more than 7000 natural hazards occurred, claimed 1.3 million lives, and affected over 4 billion people around the world, leading to USD 3 trillion economic losses. The majority of these disasters were weather-related that their occurrences have increased significantly, comparing to the last two decades of the 20th century.
In addition, many extreme hazards are likely to trigger other types of hazards, including compound events that exacerbate the cascading impacts drastically, with water being the core element associating with various type of hazards. To investigate the risks that climate change poses to the human society and the natural environment, it requires a good understanding of the involved processes and causal connections from interdisciplinary perspectives.
Thus, the next generation of researchers and engineers should be trained to equip such capacity to integrate methodologies and tools from various field for developing solutions to strengthening climate resilience.
The main objectives of the PhD Academy are bringing multidisciplinary academics from VIU network together for widening early career researchers’ vision on global challenges and offering transversal skill trainings for supporting the ECR’s career development.
Faculty
Albert Chen, University Exeter
Guangtao Fu, University Exeter
Nav Mustafee, University Exeter
Ralf Ludwig, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Patrick Willems, KULeuven
Haifeng Jia, Tsinghua University
Topics
The Academy will consist of three parts:
1) Master Classes, which international experts will give lectures and discuss with the participants about the state-of-the-art methodologies and gaps in analysing climate change impacts. The Master Classes will cover the following themes:
- Scenario definition, implementation and analysis
- Climate change and hydrometeorological hazard modelling
- Uncertainty assessment (natural variability, model structure, scenario)
- Compound disaster and cascading impact assessment
- Interventions for climate resilience
2) Transferrable Skills to help the ECRs building the capacity in scientific writing, project management, seeking funding opportunities, proposal writing, communication and presentation skills etc.
3) Hand on workshops enabling ECRs codevelop a multidisciplinary research proposal to address specific global challenge to enhance climate resilience.
Learning outcomes
- Understanding the SOTA research and exiting gaps in addressing climate resilience
- Learning multidisciplinary knowledge and linking with their own research subjects
- Improved transferable skills for research and career development
- Building interdisciplinary partnership network
Who can apply?
This international PhD Academy is offered to PhD students, post-docs, and junior researchers in environmental and social sciences. Open to candidates from all the VIU Member Institutions; applications from excellent candidates from non-member institutions will be also considered and evaluated.
Fees & grant support
Students from the VIU member institutions will pay no participation fees. Grant support is also available to support, partially or fully, the costs of international travel and accommodation. The participation fee for students of non-member institutions is Euro 1.150 VAT included. The fee is inclusive of tuition, course materials, accommodation, lunches, social events and taxes. Students from non-member institutions are not eligible for VIU grant support. VIU Alumni are eligible for a reduced fee.
Applicants must submit the application form, a letter of motivation – which should include a brief description of the candidate’s research interests, a curriculum vitae and a photo.
For further information please download the Brochure and the Program or write to: phdacademy@univiu.org
