Scholarship announcement soon from Australian desalination research centre

Australia’s National Centre of Excellence in Desalination (NCED) is set to announce its second round of PhD Supplementary Scholarships on 21 June 2011, having assessed 13 applications.

In the first round, scholarships were awarded in March to eight outstanding PhD students whose research had been identified as being in a national priority area.

Improving inland desalination technologies was a common theme among the project areas. The successful applicants from the first round were:

Mario Schmack, Murdoch University; Brackish Water Desalination Systems with Water Vapour Capture Device

Ashok Aryal, Curtin University of Technology; Investigation on Fouling of Membranes for Wastewater Treatment and Reuse

Benjamin Asquith, Monash University; Investigation of Inland Desalination Systems

Mohammad Johir, University of Technology, Sydney; Membrane Bioreactor as a Pretreatment to Sea Water Reverse Osmosis Desalination and Water Reuse

William Lawler, The University of New South Wales; A Technical and Financial Investigation into Reuse, Recycle and Disposal of Reverse Osmosis Membranes

Alexander Christ, The University of Western Australia; Development of a Novel Low-Grade Heat-Driven Desalination Technology

NCED PhD supplementary scholarships are offered to highly ranked PhD students that are enrolled full‐time and hold either an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) or other recognised Commonwealth scholarship for full‐time research leading to the award of a PhD. The maximum value of the NCED PhD Supplementary Scholarship will be Aus$ 30,000 (US$ 31,900) over three years, with a maximum payable amount of Aus$ 10,000 (US$ 10,600) per annum.

The University of Wollongong recently became the 14th research organisation to become an official member of the NCED.