The SAAO Prize Scholarships 2019/2020 for African PhD Students

Application Deadline: 31 July 2019

The SAAO Prize Scholarship is a prestigious annually awarded scholarship offered to a top African student to work on a PhD project supervised by researchers at the SAAO. The scholarship is for a 3-year PhD registered at a South African university and the student will be required to spend a minimum of 60% of their time at the SAAO. The scholarship will cover tuition and a generous stipend for living expenses. Additional support for conference travel and equipment will be provided.  The advertisement for the scholarship can be found here .   .

Projects Offered:

• Mass Loss, Pulsation and Atmospheric Mixing in Intermediate Mass Stars
  Supervisors: John Menzies (jwm@saao.ac.za), Patricia Whitelock (SAAO and UCT; paw@saao.ac.za) : Project details
• 3D Simulations of Stellar Interactions
  Supervisor: Shazrene Mohamed (shazrene@saao.ac.za): Project details
• Planetary and substellar companions to Planetary nebulae and other post-AGB stars
  Supervisors: Brent Miszalski (brent@saao.ac.za) and Rajeev Manick (rajeev@saao.ac.za): Project details
• Transients in the LSST Era
  Supervisors: David Buckley (dibnob@saao.ac.za), Patrick Woudt (UCT; pwoudt@ast.uct.ac.za), and Brian
  van Soelen (UFS; VanSoelenB@ufs.ac.za): Project details
• Vertical structure evolution of spiral galaxy disks using optical and near-infrared
  integral field spectroscopy
  Supervisors: Matthew Bershady (mab@saao.ac.za): Project details
• Design, development and commissioning of a fibre slit-mask integral-field unit for
  SALT prime-focus spectrograph
  Supervisors: Matthew Bershady (mab@saao.ac.za): Project details

Further information about the scholarship application procedure and scholarship rules can be found here .  You are strongly encouraged to contact potential supervisors to discuss the project before applying. Contact scholarship@saao.ac.za if you have further queries.

Eligibility:
The scholarship is currently open to South Africans or citizens of other African countries who hold, or are studying towards, an MSc degree in physics, astrophysics, or a closely related area (ideally with some astronomy background), and must be ready to register for a PhD at the start of the 2020 academic year (typically the end of February 2020).

Application:
Send your CV, motivation, academic transcript to scholarship@saao.ac.za and arrange for 2 reference letters to be sent to the same address by the closing date.

Degree Funded: 3-year PhD
Funding Amount: R180,000 per year (plus support for tuition, equipment and travel).
Start of Funding: 2020
Applications Open: 10 June 2019
Applications Close: 31 July 2019

CLICK HERE TO APPLY